Hasta La Gadget!

With the amount of use Chuck gets out of his “Nerd Herd” mobile, plus our own anecdotal sightings of Geek Squad vehicles around town (see what we did there? Science), we’d say that they’re ripe for EV replacements, and what better than the hard-to-pronounce i-MiEV from Mitsubishi to do the job? As announced at the LA Auto Show on Thursday, a few Best Buy Geek Squad locations in California are getting access to the cars in January, with minimal fleets that will expand to the other stores over a few years. For now it’s going to be an experiment, and primarily urban, but we like where this is headed. As in, “not to our house, because we’re perfectly adept at setting up a wireless network, thanks.”

Some Geek Squads to start driving plug-in Mitsubishi i-MiEVs originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Call me dorky, but for me the perfect game is one where you also learn something. It may have something to do with the Great British Pub Quiz, which long ago replaced the formal academic examination in UK schools and universities because a) attendance runs to almost 100% and b) you get to drink beer.

So if you, too, prefer to read a how-to article on the web than kill five minutes on yet another tower-defense game, try out Stuff to Rattle Your Brain, a trivia quiz game from the good folks at How Stuff Works. Or rather, don’t. How Stuff Works is an excellent resource for the curious, explaining, amongst other things, how the iPhone works, whether or not Santa is real, and offering videos of such educational items as the two-faced cat (literally two-faced, not metaphorically two-faced like all cats).

But this application looks like any random piece of flung-together junk you’d find amongst the 100,000 apps in the store. There are mis-spellings, and the questions seem to be weasel-worded to make you get them wrong even if you know the answer. For instance, a question from the “computer” category: “A firewall is a barrier to keep destructive forces away from your property. True or false?” If you give the correct answer, “false”, then you will be wrong.

Still, it’s not all bad. Any app which can include this wonderfully non-politically-correct question is fine with me: “Even as babies and children, girls cry more than boys on average?” The answer? True! (Actually, false). You can let the application store your scores online, and questions are refreshed periodically from the internet.

We guess it is still better than a round of Orba, but the brain-rattling in the title is more likely to refer to the frustration it causes than to a genuine mental challenge.

Stuff to Rattle Your Brain [iTunes. Thanks, Katy!]

It’s a bit later than the mid-December target heard previously, but ASUS’ 12-inch Ion-packing Eee PC 1201N is up for pre-order with an anticipated January 15 release. A penny short of $500 takes home a dual-core N330 processor clocking 1.6GHz on the Atomic clock, 2GB of DDR2 memory with room to expand to 8GB, a 250GB 5,400 RPM hard disk, Bluetooth, 802.11n WiFi, webcam, and fancy new 32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium OS — none of that Starter Edition netbook nonsense. Here’s the rub: are you really going to pull the trigger for a legacy Diamondville-class Atom lappie now knowing that the big CES event in January will likely be flooded with Intel’s latest Pineview-class machines sporting new N450 Atom processors, of which, at least a few will offer HD video acceleration? Pre-order now if you want but we’d wait until January 11th to see what might get announced.

[Thanks, Luke F.]

Update: We’ve been in touch with ASUS’ UK team and can confirm that Blighty will be getting its chance at Ion-infused nirvana at a similar time, “mid-January” they say, and at the slightly higher price of £399 ($663).

ASUS Eee PC 1201N Ion-based Seashell ready for $500 Amazon pre-order originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Thermaltake’s Level 10 PC chassis, a 47-pound beautiful behemoth in every way, has completed its almost exactly 9-month march from a March design unveiling to a “now shipping” retail page on Newegg. At $849.99, it ain’t cheap, but let’s not forget what’s really important here: it fits three Blu-ray writers. Happy shopping / minor debt!

[Thanks, Keenan]

Thermaltake Level 10 now shipping, ready to rock your socks and wallet off originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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