Hasta La Gadget!

What’s a distinguished person of taste and refinement to do when smartphones nowadays are all so bulky and, well, ubiquitous? He or she should go take a look at Vertu‘s store, of course, which has today been populated for the first time with a new, even more exclusive Signature collection, composed of four models — one for each season. There’s a load of talk about delicate hand-crafting and latest technology with these, but the truth of the matter is that you’ll be buying one solely for the purpose of puling it out of your carefully pressed, kerchiefed Armani suit in the hope of impressing any and all nearby members of the opposite sex. What this phone will then say, nay, scream, about you is that you have the money to buy things that are neither functional nor physically appealing — the surest way to signal wealth and prestige. How much money? Try a million Yen for each handset, which roughly translates to $10,830.

Update: Our sage readers have noted a failure in our machine-translated pricing. The handsets in fact cost 20 million Yen a piece, which equates to $216,600. So sorry to have misled you if you were heading off to the bank to get that 10 grand.

Vertu reminds us it’s still alive with million-Yen phones, still tasteless as ever originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You might think, given our recent bout of attentiveness toward wristwear, that we’re starting to develop an Enwatchet subsection, but that’s not entirely accurate. It’s just that when we come across such wild and quirky designs, there’s nothing to be done but share them with the world. Case in point: the Cabestan Nostromo watch, inspired by the ship from the Alien movie. In the words of its own designers, the Nostromo combines traditional watchmaking with “retro-futuristic audacity,” and when we gaze upon its exposed vertical mechanics, we can’t exactly argue otherwise. With a titanium case, Superluminova phosphorescent coating for dusky situations, and side windows (see them after the break), this is as appealing a watch as any geek can dare to imagine. Sure, you could probably buy a sports car for less than the 150,000 Swiss Francs ($141,400 in American currency) asking price, but it’s not like you can strap a Porsche to your wrist, now is it?

Continue reading Cabestan’s Nostromo watch is geared for success

Cabestan’s Nostromo watch is geared for success originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Given how simple we’ve made timekeeping over the years, it was inevitable that luxury watches would have to move into more esoteric lands in order to exude the appropriate sense of wonder when witnessed by those who can’t afford them. You might call that the Xperia Pureness effect. Ergo, quite aside from its platinum or 18-carat gold construction options, the 4N watch tries to grab the spotlight with its quirky disc-based mechanism, which rotates numbers (four numbers, hence 4N) into position to display a digital readout of the time. The fact that all three discs — built out of aluminum or a titanium alloy — and the MVT01 movement are exposed to the eye earns geek cred from us, while the limited run of only 16 units should ensure the desired exclusivity for the watches’ future owners. As the old saying about price goes, if you have to ask, you can’t afford one.

4N wristwatch delivers digital time in a mechanical fashion originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Olive and Thiel team up for a high end, high priced audio server

Olive and Thiel team up for a high end, high priced audio server originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One might expect a smallish outfit like CyberPower to start the new year off with merely a fizzle, but the “bang” is firmly in place with this one. The company has just announced its refaced (and re-energized) Black Mamba gaming PC, complete with Intel’s freshest Core i7 Extreme CPU, 6GB of DDR3 RAM, twin 64GB Kingston SSDs, 2TB of SATA II storage space, a pair of watercooled ATI Radeon 5870 GPUs, a 4x Lite-On Blu-ray drive and a 12-in-1 media reader for good measure. You’ll also get a tweaked BIOS that gives you more flexibility when it comes to overclocking, and the bundled Razer input peripherals ensure that even your mouse and keyboard needs are addressed. Best of all, this pristine piece of gaming goodness can be ordered up right now — problem is, you’ll need a bare minimum of $3,800 to cover the cost of acquisition. But hey, that 2009 tax refund should cover that in just a few months, right?

Refreshed CyberPower Black Mamba gaming rig: downright awesome (for rich people) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 02:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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