Hasta La Gadget!

Sure, e-book readers are the hot gadgets of the moment–but how about a tablet-size device that lets you enjoy movies, photos, and music, as well? Aluratek has just announced the Cinepal, a digital travel companion for enjoying all your media. It offers an 8.9-inch, 720p LCD display and includes 4GB of memory. You can increase the storage with the SD/SDHC memory card slot. The rechargeable lithium ion battery is rated for 6 hours of continuous play.

For movies, the Cinepal supports, DivX DRM content, which you can buy from Cinemanow.com and FilmFresh.com, as well as AVI, VOB, DAT, MPG, MPEG, H.264, MKV, and RM/RMVB files. You can view photos in JPG and MPG formats. For music, you’re limited to MP3 and WMA tracks. No AAC? That’s fine; no one buys from the iTunes Store anyway, now the largest music retailer in the U.S. The Cinepal has a list price of $179.

If you were worried that packing WiMAX into a MiFi-like device would end up bloating it by a thousand percent, we’re very happy to report that you’d be wrong. The Overdrive’s only marginally bigger than a MiFi and takes on a diamond-cut square shape (as opposed to the MiFi’s rectangle) while adding a monochrome LCD up front that can be triggered on by touching (but not pressing) the power button. Other than that, you’ve got a micro-USB port, a microSD slot… and, well, that’s about it. For something designed to slide into your pocket, we’d have it no other way.

Sprint Overdrive hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Panasonic was showing off its new lineup of cameras and camcorders at its display table at Digital Experience, but that wasn’t what really caught our eyes. Nope, that honor went to the DMP-B500, a portable Blu-ray player that had both a killer screen and a (fairly) slim profile. Better yet, it doubles as a standalone Blu-ray player when you connect it to your TV, and it links up nicely with other VIERA products. Also on display was a WiFi photo frame with a built in CD player and a hidden iPod dock. Calendar and photo widgets looked nice on the crisp display, and let’s just put it this way, we don’t know how much we’d mind waking up to that in the morning. You don’t have to take our word for it though, check our the goods in our hands-on gallery.

Panasonic packs a punch with portable Blu-ray player at CES (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony‘s just announced a ton of new laptops. And by a ton, we mean a ton. First up, the 13.1-inch Vaio Z high res backlit screen and weighs in at just around three pounds. Boasting switchable graphics, this one should get more battery life for your money, and it also packs an HDMI output, optional built-in Verizon Wireless 3G, WiFi, and Bluetooth. All Vaio Z models are sold with SSDs — up to 512GB. Moving on to the Vaio W (the most interesting of the lot for sure, in out opinions), this laptop’s cashing in on the eco-friendly game by being… eco-friendly. The Vaio W Eco Edition 212AX is a 10.1-incher with a backlit widescreeen display and a 250GB hard drive. It’s made from a reprocessed plastic chassis, and environmentally friendly, reusable packaging, so you can feel great when you drop $480 on this sucker. Finally, the Y series netbook is ultra-thin with a 13.3-inch LED backlit widescreen display, an optional Intel Core 2 Duo, ultra low voltage processor, and up to 8GB of RAM. This bad boy can be yours for a starting price of about $800. All of these are available for pre-order now at Sony Style.

Continue reading Sony bumps out Vaio Z, F, W and Y series laptops

Filed under: Laptops

Sony bumps out Vaio Z, F, W and Y series laptops originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just a quick little note from Microsoft’s CES 2010 keynote, but man it’s a surprise. AT&T U-Verse subscribers will soon be able to use their Xbox 360s as a set-top box. AT&T U-Verse is the one IPTV provider in the US — admittedly there aren’t many — that utilizes Microsoft’s Mediaroom platform and while it was announced at CES three years ago that the 360 could act as a Mediaroom set-top, up until now AT&T customers didn’t have this option — well, maybe not now as an exact release date wasn’t mentioned. We also don’t have a clue if AT&T will charge for this type of thing. Another thing cool that was mentioned was that a Windows 7 PC can also work as a Mediaroom set-top and Mediaroom was even demoed on a Windows Mobile phone.

Xbox 360 will support AT&T’s U-Verse TV later this year originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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