Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re concerned about the future obsolescence of your miniscule Atom-based nettop, chances are its choice of optical storage is not what’s bothering you. But, if that’s what keeps you up at nights, Onkyo‘s P3 is your Ambien. Its ION platform sports the usual 1.6GHz Atom 230 proc, 2GB of memory, and 160GB hard drive. The DVD-ROM is a separate module that clips into a groove on the side and, while details are slim, that doesn’t look like a standard form-factor to us, so if a Blu-ray upgrade or the like ever surfaces don’t expect it to be cheap. The P3 itself (pictured again below with an LCD friend) isn’t exactly a bargain to start, with an estimated MSRP of ¥69,800 (about $770) when it ships in March of next year. That’s the price you pay for modular design.

[Via PC Watch]

Continue reading Onkyo’s tiny ION-based P3 nettop has an even tinier removable DVD-ROM

Filed under: Desktops

Onkyo’s tiny ION-based P3 nettop has an even tinier removable DVD-ROM originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I know. More bike lights. My excuse is that winter is a-coming and any way of getting cyclists to brighten up their rides is a good one.

Today’s bike lamp product is the Dosun J-1 Safety Pedal (or “Safty” pedal, as it is proudly spelled on the unnavigable Flash-site), a replacement platform pedal with a light inside. The pair of old-school rubber pedals each has a small LED bank powered by the spinning motion of the axles inside (or the spinning of the pedals themselves. It’s all relative, as they say), and thirty seconds of spinning fills the capacitors for ninety seconds of flashing, enough to get you through all but the most harrowing traffic-light track-stands.

The lights are embedded in the corners in each pedal, front and back, but because they are all red you might have legal trouble in some countries where the forward facing light should be white. They’re also all-but waterproof and have the added bonus that you could put them on a single-speed hipster-bike and not spoil the clean lines (there are no provisions for toe-clips so fixed-gear riders should stay away). $40.

Product page [Dosun via Urban Velo]

See Also:

• Magnet Powered Bike Lamps Light Up the Night
• Ultra-Bright Bike Tail-Light Resembles Star Wars Spaceship …
• Hands-On with the Knog Frog Bike Light
• Spooklight: Accelerometer Brake Light for Bikes
• Reelight Handlebar Lights. Battery-Free Lamps Climb Higher …

It used to be that “convergence” meant putting two different (but hopefully complementary) devices into the same case. Scratch that. This still happens today, as proved by the Alex, a long box with an e-book reader in one end and an Android-powered cellular device in the other. The dual-screen device, from a company called Spring Design, is like a Pop-Tart with jelly in one end and baloney in the other.

The Alex (we have no idea about that name) aims to strike a balance between the full-color, fully responsive LCD screen at the bottom, used for web surfing, and the e-ink panel above, used for reading books. The idea is that once you have found what you like, you can send it upstairs and kill the battery-guzzling color part, reading the content on the eye and battery friendly e-ink screen. It also goes the other way, with links in the e-ink display opening pictures and video in the color one. This is called “dynamic hyperlinked multimedia information” and was sent through time to the Spring research labs from 1995.

Aside from the ugly design (and that damned name) it’s a fine idea, let down by one thing. Most of us have a cellphone already, or at least some kind of portable device that can both browse the web and save longer articles to the Instapaper service, which lets you hit a bookmark to convert articles into text and read them later, on a web browser, the iphone, or even have them emailed to your Kindle.

The other problem with two screens (despite the inevitable hit to battery life) is that the Alex is big, as in long and tall. We’d much rather have a bigger, single e-paper screen. As it is you get 6-inch e-ink display and a 3-inch color display. To rephrase, you get a Kindle and an iPhone screen in one, only without all the extra functions.

Spring says it “has been working with major book stores, newspapers and publishers over the past two years.” Remember the hot rumor that a Barnes and Noble device would be showing up soon and feature two screens, one color and one of electronic ink? This could well be it. One thing that is certain is that this won’t be the last goofy e-book design. We have a long way to go before natural selection gives us a design as perfect as the paper book itself. Price and launch date to be announced.

Product page [Spring Design. Thanks, Eric!]

Surprise! Another “new” computer coming out October 22nd alongside Windows 7, or at least rumored to be. This time it’s the previously-rumored ASUS Eee PC T91MT, which has wound up as a listing on Amazon Germany. Same processor and 8.9-inch screen size as the T91, but with a 160GB HDD instead of solid-state. Since it’s Windows 7, there’s now multitouch support, hence the “MT.” The color options are black and white and it’ll set you back about 506 euros ($754). Oh, you wanted US prices and release dates? Show a little more patience, why don’t ya?

[Via Netbooknews.de]

Filed under: Laptops

ASUS Eee PC T91MT multitouch tablet listed on Amazon.de for October 22nd originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We love this human-powered reading chair by Rochus Jacob, which powers an OLED lamp with the rocking motion of the reader beneath, keeping your pages illuminated by night and storing excess jiggle-energy in batteries by day.

How does the Murakami Chair work? “Advanced nano-dynamo technology which is built in to the skids of the chair.” Quite. This is probably the reason that the chair is just a concept design rather than a real, working product. Still, when Jacob manages to find a hardware store that will sell him a few pounds of stick-on nano-dynamos, expect to see this in stores. Until that time, suck it up learn to deal with a few cables already.

Project page [Design Boom]