Hasta La Gadget!

We’re not sure if Clevo has had to deal with trade show thievery in the past, but its Core i7-equipped D900F was locked down tight at CeBIT. Nevertheless, we stopped by — camera in hand — to have a look, and what we saw was something we’d never, ever want on our laps for more than 120 seconds. We also saw a ridiculously potent LAN party rig, so we suppose there’s some truth to that “eye of the beholder” thing our parents keep mentioning. All the big pics are just below, but you already knew that, didn’t you?

Continue reading Core i7-packin’ Clevo D900F gaming laptop hands-off

Filed under: Laptops

Core i7-packin’ Clevo D900F gaming laptop hands-off originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While we’ve seen the latest and greatest ClarionMiND reviewed since it got stuffed with Intel’s Atom and optional WWAN, we’ve yet to actually catch one in person… until today, that is. Over at Clarion’s spacious CeBIT booth, we took the liberty of snapping a few shots of this here MID. After toying with it for a few minutes, we were less than impressed by the finicky screen response, and the noticeable lag between application changes got annoying pretty quickly. Still, the main home screen looked mighty slick, so we suppose there’s nothing horribly wrong that a minor firmware update can’t fix. Anywho, dive on into the gallery below should you find yourself intrigued.

Filed under: Handhelds

Atom-powered ClarionMiND MID hands-on at CeBIT originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Roku was nice enough to upgrade our player for Amazon Video on Demand a little early, and we’re basically impressed — although we’re not in love with SD video and stereo audio, it’s hard to complain about a free service update. Actually, that might be the best thing about the newly-rebranded Roku Video Player: Roku’s opening the platform to third-party channels, so eventually the $99 box will be able to stream from all kinds of sources. Amazon is just the first additional channel built using the new tools, and for the most part, things work just like Netflix — the interface has been only slightly modified to enable selecting content from the box itself instead of from your online queue. We’re talking really slightly: there’s no search interface, so it’s sort of like having lots of categorized queues. One minor complaint: the rental clock starts when you purchase content, not when you start playback, which isn’t necessarily the most flexible setup, but it makes sense given the streaming-only nature of the service, we suppose. That said, purchasing is easy and fast, and we had no problems streaming in the highest-available quality on our 10Mbps cable connection — Max Payne didn’t look super-awesome in SD, but it was certainly watchable. Bottom line? It’s perfect for a bedroom, but we’re way more particular about the home theater — Roku tells us the Video Player can actually do 1080i and 5.1 if the content is there, so hopefully we’ll see someone leverage those capabilities and turn this thing into a $99 Apple TV / Vudu killer. Quick little demo vid after the break.

Continue reading Roku Amazon Video on Demand hands-on

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Roku Amazon Video on Demand hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We saw the first motherboard we’d actually consider buying a clear case for earlier this week when ASUS announced its new Marine Cool concept mobo, so we couldn’t resist the urge to swing by and grab a few snaps of it here at CeBIT. Unfortunately, the board was sitting behind 3-inches of bulletproof glass, but that didn’t stop our lens from getting as close as possible. We’ll be frank — this thing looks even better in person, and it just might be the catalyst the mobo world needed to start caring about design.

Filed under: Peripherals

Hands-off with ASUS Marine Cool concept motherboard originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Mar 2009 04:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We had a chance to play around with Avaak’s new multi-camera wireless video system, the Vue, and we’ve got to say — it’s kind of neat. The technology — originally funded by DARPA and developed by the company for the military — uses a mesh network (dubbed FrameMesh) to allow up to 50 cameras to communicate with a single base station. The premise is simple, you connect the included base to your router, then switch on as many of the cameras as you like; each one feeds its signal back home, then straight to your account on the company’s servers where you can monitor the videos remotely. Once the video hits the page (the cameras stay off until you’re actually watching something), you can record, or share them via Facebook, Flickr, etc. The cameras themselves are tiny things, and each one perches on a magnetized base where they can be adjusted to almost any position. The basic kit will run you $299, which includes the base station and two cameras, and each additional camera is $99. Not the lowest point of entry, but if you’re into seriously monitoring some things, this is an insanely simple way to do it — and we can’t wait to see what installation artists get up to with these guys. Check out some hands-on pics in the gallery, then enjoy a brief video demo after the break.

Continue reading Vue mesh network video system hands-on

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Vue mesh network video system hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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