We're not sure if he's been taking notes from fellow countryman
Jean-Michel Jarre or not, but it looks like prolific designer Philippe Starck now has a tower-style speaker system to call his own. Considering that Starck has paired up with the wireless-minded folks at
Parrot, however, there's a few more surprises in store with these -- namely, built-in WiFi and Bluetooth to accommodate your laptop or cellphone of choice. You will still get an iPod / iPhone dock, of course, along with a remote control (also designed by Starck), and some newfangled NXT technology that apparently "revolutionizes traditional acoustic design." All that comes at an expectedly premium price, however, with the speakers set to run $1,500 when they're released sometime in the spring.
[Via Phone Arena]
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Parrot intros Philippe Starck-designed Zimku wireless speakers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments 
The kids at Gotta Be Mobile have given the old what-for to the new
Fujitsu N7010 laptop -- you know, the one with the 4-inch touchscreen above the keys -- and we have the video to prove it. All said, the reviewer seems pretty impressed by the thing, especially its remarkable 960 x 544 resolution. However, he did have some trouble getting it to work with Windows Journal. Since this is configured as a second monitor and not some sort of
SideShow display, there are all sorts of possibilities, as long as you don't mind a little squinting. Depending on how you work, this might be one of those devices that you never knew you needed. Video after the break.
Continue reading Fujitsu N7010 laptop with 4-inch touchscreen caught on video
Filed under: Displays, Laptops
Fujitsu N7010 laptop with 4-inch touchscreen caught on video originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments Cowon's 16GB
S9 may have just started
shipping out yesterday, but we just acquired one of the 8GB models a day before it's
expected to hit the rest of America. We're planning on spending a little time with this critter to give you our thoughts, but for now, we figured we'd let you toy around in the gallery below to get acquainted. Our first impression upon cracking open the box was along the lines of "wow, this thing is small... and light!" Maybe that zoomed in
press shot we've been drooling over had our proportions all jacked up, but needless to say you won't have a tough time fitting this one in your right front pocket. Check out the images below for an unboxing and UI walkthrough that'll surely bring copious amounts of joy into your life.
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
Cowon S9 PMP unboxing and hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments Psst... hey you. Yeah, you. Want a free
Fuze? Of course you do -- who wouldn't? Head on over to Engadget Mobile and we'll show you how!
Filed under: Announcements, Cellphones, Handhelds
Win an AT&T Fuze from HTC and Engadget Mobile! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments 
By now you should have heard about the
Engadget NYC reader meetup / holiday party taking place
TOMORROW, Friday, December 19th. If you're not clued in to all the happenings, this should bring you up to speed. We'll have participation (and giveaways) from the following companies:
Nokia, Microsoft (Zune and Xbox), T-Mobile, Palm, HP, SanDisk, Peek, VIA, Sling, Bug Labs, Neat Receipts, Panasonic, Livescribe, Rhapsody, and Make.Some new additions (to the already large stack of items): VIA has just handed over an
Artigo A2000, Peek is going to be flooding the event with a whopping 12 handhelds to give out (celebrating its
12 days of Peekmas), Bug Labs is offering a
BUGBundle, and Livescribe has provided us with a
Pulse (courtesy of Target)! And remember, those are just a few of the goods on offer.
Remember, feel free to bring any hacks, mods, or other generally awesome tech you want to show off to us and other Engadget readers -- you don't get the chance too often!
Here are some super-important details about the event:
- We're giving away tens of thousands of dollars in gear! Including...
- SanDisk 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB microSD cards for the first 200 people through the door!
- Free food, and free drink tickets for the first 500 people
- Live Q&A session with Engadget editors
- Music for the evening will be provided by Justin VanDerVolgen (of !!! and Outhud)
- The event is 18 TO ENTER / 21 TO DRINK, AND YOU MUST BRING AN ID. ADMISSION IS FREE. Sorry younger readers, but we'll do a follow-up all ages event soon!
- The venue capacity tops out at a tiny bit over 1000, so you if you're coming, be sure to get there early!
When:
Friday, December 19th, 7:00PM to 12:00AM
Where:
Hiro Ballroom, 371 W. 16th St., New York, NY. 10011You can RSVP (or just discuss plans) for the event on
Facebook here.
For media interested in attending, please ping us at: nycreadermeetup [at] gmail [dot] com
Note: space for media is very limited as this is a reader event. Readers, you're all set -- no need to email us.Filed under: Announcements
Engadget NYC reader meetup, December 19th: new giveaways, more info originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments We
tried to warn you, but you just didn't want to hear it. "How bad could it be?" you muttered to yourself, as you handed over a summer's worth of lawn mowing money for a shiny new
BlackBerry Storm. Pretty bad, as it turns out. Based on a pile of anecdotal evidence and hearsay, numbers as high as a 50% return rate have been bandied about. The software update certainly helped the situation, but there are still a lot of disappointed thumbs out there. So, how'd it go down on your end?
Update: So Verizon
has hit up Boy Genius Report to clarify (well, maybe clarify) the situation: "The Storm has the lowest return rate of any of our PDAs and at this point in its life cycle, it has the lowest return rate of any PDA we currently sell." That kinda sounds like doublespeak to us -- if the Storm was really so thoroughly un-returned, couldn't they have said it in simpler terms? -- but that's about all we've got to go on at the moment.
View Poll
Filed under: Cellphones
BlackBerry Storm buyer's remorse? You're not alone! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments 
Well, here's a bit of a surprise. While most folks were only
expecting NVIDIA to announce its GeForce GTX 295 graphics card at CES, the company has now come out and gotten official with it today, although it's still holding back on a few details until the big show. As rumored earlier this month, the card packs two 55-nanometer GT200 GPUs, a staggering 1,792MB of video memory, a total of 480 stream processors, and a not-too-ridiculous TDP rating of 289 watts. What's more, while they faced some restrictions from NVIDIA, the folks at bit-tech were able to run a few benchmarks on the card and found that it does indeed seem to live up to its promise of besting ATI's top-end Radeon HD 4870 X2. That appears to partly back up those
early numbers that leaked out yesterday, although bit-tech is quick to point out that the card doesn't deliver the same performance leap seen when AMD rolled out its card. Still, they do seem to think that NVIDIA has a winner on its hands, assuming that it actually manages to meet (or even beat) the 4870 in terms of price. Hit up the link below for bit-tech's complete numbers, plus a few more.
Read - HotHardware, "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 Specifications Unveiled"
Read - bit-tech.net, "First Look: Nvidia's GeForce GTX 295 graphics card"
Read - Guru 3D, "GeForce GTX 295 Preview"
Read - PC Perspective, "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 Preview - Performance King Returns"
Filed under: Gaming
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 gets (mostly) official originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Photos of the ASUS Galaxy 7 touchscreen phone have been popping up
for months now, and due to a resemblance a certain Samsung device, it's been referred to more than once as an "
Omnia-killer" (of course, we understand the urge, but we have to ask if it's even worth the effort). Now it looks like the folks over at
Mobile Review have their hands on the thing, and they've been kind enough to share their thoughts. Right off the bat, they were disappointed to learn that plans for a 800 MHz processor had been scrapped in lieu of the far less exciting 528 MHz Qualcom MS7200A, but they then go on to give props to the phone's Glide interface (on par with
TouchFlo3D, it seems) and its build quality -- the handset itself seems sturdy, well considered, and it even integrates some leather for that touch of "class" that only a dead animal can bring. Other than that, it's pretty much what you were expecting: a WinMob phone with a 5 megapixel camera, a 3.5-inch (800 x 480) display, 512MB memory, 4GB storage and a microSD slot. The phone should be available early next year.
[Via
Wmpoweruser]
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
ASUS Galaxy 7 touchphone gets manhandled originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments Not to be outdone by NVIDIA's move to accelerate netbook graphics with
its new Ion platform, VIA just debuted its "Trinity" platform, which pairs a
VIA Nano chip with a Media System Processor like the VIA VX800 and a discrete
S3 Graphics PCI Express GPU. VIA is aiming this lineup at netbooks and mini-PCs, and are planning to power DirectX 10.1, HD video, Blu-ray playback and Windows Vista. Sounds fine and dandy to us, but unfortunately, like with NVIDIA, we're at the mercy of the manufacturers who will actually be stuffing this into their product -- and they've sure seemed gun-shy with Nano so far. Hopefully this can change some of that, Christian Bale is only half as badass at 15 fps QVGA.
Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, HDTV, Laptops
VIA's Trinity Platform brings much-needed religious imagery to small form factor media acceleration originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments 
If you're a frequent reader you're surely well aware of the potential of spin torque transfer memory, or STT-MRAM, and how spin-polarized magnetic currents (and the electrons they love to caress) might hold the potential to revolutionize storage as we know it. If you can't get your noggin around the concepts, know the potential: a new type of memory that will be cheaper, faster, and more efficient than current RAM, while also having the flash-like ability to retain data without power. IBM, who first floated the idea last year, is now sharing some more details about its prototype device that, while only able to store 4Kb of data (roughly half the text of this post in ASCII), is said to be able to retain that for 10 years. There's still no word on when we might be able to buy some of the stuff for our home computers, or when it'll be able to hold something a little more impressive (like maybe a whole post), but we're guessing it'll be well into the next decade before your Three 6 Mafia MP3 collection starts ridin' spinning electrons that don't stop.
[Via MRAM-Info]
Filed under: Storage
IBM's prototype STT MRAM device spins your bits right round, baby, right round originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments Grab your Light Swords, it's time to kill some Jedi to save the Empire from the Ewok menace! We know you already own
seven Wiis, each one espousing a different sort of childhood memorabilia or cute-overload, but can't you
use the force to make room in your heart for one more? This Star Wars-themed Wii just hit the eBays, with a $500 starting price that includes the work of art you see before you, a red LED Wiimote and nunchuck, and a copy of
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. You can't usually
put a pricetag on this sort of midi-chlorian concentration.
Filed under: Gaming
Star Wars Wii mod realizes very few of our childhood dreams originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments No use messing around in this space, if you're gonna build the umpteenth 3.5-inch DMB-capable
PMP for the voracious Korean market, you might as well put some heart into it.
MAXIAN's new M1T Pocket Multi TV shines with 8GB or 16GB of built-in storage, SDHC expansion and just about every codec imaginable, including the extra-sexy ones like OGG, AAC, DivX and XviD. The whole kit is running Windows CE 5.0, with what looks to be a resistive touchscreen (480 x 320) and a purty home-grown interface. No word on price, but it's not like we'd have much use for that DMB antenna anyways. We're not bitter.
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
MAXIAN M1T Pocket Multi TV does the PMP thing like it means it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments Ever found yourself with 70 decommissioned
SCSI hard drives and an awful, awful lot of free time on your hands? If so, and you're bursting with holiday spirit, perhaps you'll choose to do the same as an apparent sys admin who goes by the name of Trigger. He took those drives from RAID arrays destined for the scrap heap and, rather than perform the DoD wipe that would have otherwise been required, chose to build this lovely -- if somewhat askew (see below) -- "tree" from the bevy of mirrored platters within. In fact the geeky holiday decor was made
entirely from the bits and pieces within the drives, the lone exception being a nut purchased for $.39, making it a far more affordable project than yesterday's
OLED tree. It's impressive to behold, but given the amount of personal data within, we think it's probably more likely to spread lawsuits than cheer this season.
Continue reading Xmas tree made entirely of SCSI drives, offers lower CPU load than IDE alternatives
Filed under: Storage
Xmas tree made entirely of SCSI drives, offers lower CPU load than IDE alternatives originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments Sometimes it's the unsung workhorses that deserve the lion's share of the praise, and that might just be the case with the aging Samsung
BlackJack II -- a phone that you probably wouldn't expect to top Consumer Reports' January 2009 ratings of popular smartphones. Sure, it may not be the shiniest device on the market these days, but you've got to admit it's just about as functional as you'd ever need a business-class handset to be with GPS, HSDPA, and WinMo 6.1, which gladly sucks up Exchange accounts until you're blue in the face. When you factor in the fact that it runs just $80 these days on an AT&T contract in a choice of four colors... okay, yeah, we can kinda see it. The
iPhone 3G and
T-Mobile G1 don't play second fiddle terribly often these days (they were way down in the middle of the Consumer Reports pack in this testing cycle, in fact), so let's just let this old dog have one more moment in the spotlight, shall we?
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
Samsung BlackJack II tops Consumer Reports' list of best smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments Apparently the Motorola leak-fest begun yesterday hasn't come to a halt. After witnessing some
compelling renders of smartphones the company has headed to Verizon, we're now privy to a set of featurephone / dumbphone mockups -- all courtesy of the
Boy Genius Report. The new images show off a device supposedly called the "Niagra" (pictured), a slider in the vein of yesterday's "Calgary" QWERTY phone, a dowdy looking number called the "Fairbanks" (a PTT device), and a clamshell called the "Harmony." The latter two phones could hardly stoke much excitement, but the Niagra definitely gives us some hope for Moto's big comeback. Now -- these will all be powered by Android, right?
More of Motorola's 2009 Verizon lineup leaked originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 07:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments ASUS's touchscreen
Eee Top ET1602 all-in-one was certainly adored in a pre-staged way by small children when it
launched last month, but Slashgear's taken it for a spin and found that it actually deserves the love. The 15.6-inch resistive touchscreen wasn't on par with the capacitive screen in
HP's TouchSmart or the active digitizer in newer tablet PCs, but it did the job, and ASUS's Windows XP "Easy Mode" launcher and bundled touch apps were intuitive and friendly, although certain apps would drop back into XP's mouse-oriented interface at times. Under the hood, the netbook-class 1.6GHz Atom, 1GB of RAM, and GMA950 graphics didn't rock anyone's world, but they managed general browsing and 720p video playback without issue. All in all, it seems like ASUS has built an interesting little AIO for the expected US price of $450 -- now if they'd just start shipping them here, we'd find out for ourselves. Hit the read link for the full review.
Filed under: Desktops
ASUS Eee Top ET1602 touchscreen all-in-one gets reviewed originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 07:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments The last Philips Prestigo universal remote we saw was that gigantic
SR-M80145 "tablet," but it looks like the company's toned it down with the sexy new Prestigo SRT9320. The company's new top-of-the-line IR-only clicker has a 2.8-inch color touchscreen and can be programmed to control up to 20 devices entirely from the remote itself without using a PC -- which can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your setup and macro situation. It's all yours for $249 sometime in the first quarter of twenty-oh-nine.
[Via
Electronista]
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Philips unveils Prestigo SRT9320 touchscreen universal remote originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 05:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments We'd heard Toshiba was
working on 512GB SSDs back in April, and the company's delivering right before CES. The industry-first half-terabyte drive is the highlight of Tosh's new line of 43nm MLC drives, which also includes 64GB, 128GB and 256GB units in both 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors -- just right to pudge out your laptops and netbooks. No word on price, but you've got plenty of time to save up, as these won't hit mass production until at least April.
Filed under: Storage
Toshiba announces 512GB SSD, other smaller SSDs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 03:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments Great googly moogly, we wrote about this very application
like fifty weeks ago. Fifty, people! Of course, with the drawn-out
SlingCatcher drama, lengthy Sling product cycles aren't a terribly big surprise, so we should just all thank our lucky stars we're going to be getting our hands on SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry before the year's out. The app officially enters its public beta cycle come December 30 for the
Bold, the Curve
8320 /
8900, the Pearl
8120 /
8220, and the venerable
8820, piping your home teevee right to your handset and usurping any semblance of productivity your BlackBerry otherwise stands for. A 3G or WiFi connection is "strongly recommended" -- which we take to mean "go ahead, give EDGE a whirl" -- but BlackBerry OS 4.5 is a hard and fast requirement, so make sure you come equipped with the goods if you want to waste some quality time in front of the small screen when this goes live.
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Portable Video
SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry goes beta at long last on December 30 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments It took a little longer than
we'd heard due to some last-minute complications, but Panasonic's deal to buy almost all of Sanyo has finally been approved by Sanyo's major shareholders. Under the deal, Panny will buy out some 70 percent of Sanyo for ¥131 ($1.50) a share, making the total deal worth some ¥560B ($6.41B). That'd be lot of scratch even if the economy wasn't in the tank, but Panny thinks it'll be worth it to take over Sanyo's position in the solar and
rechargeable battery markets, which it thinks are due to blow up. Er, not
blow up like that -- in the fun-filled raining-cash way. You get the idea. Xactis for everyone!
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Panasonic to officially purchase controlling stake in Sanyo for $6.4B originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments There's no denying that
Brando has a special place in its heart for
shrunken keyboards, and the latest addition to its product line continues the trend. This appropriately titled "Wireless Illuminated Super Tiny Keyboard" is a slim 15mm, has 56 keys, and operates wirelessly via an included dongle. Yeah, it may not have Bluetooth or
handy media keys -- but you can't argue with that electric blue backlight. If this info has got your fingers twitching, you can order one now for $47 with shipping expected by "end of December 2008."
[Thanks, mtviolets]
Filed under: Peripherals
Brando's latest mini-keyboard: blue backlight, impossible to type on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comments While we may not know exactly what item we're looking at in the photo above, we do know that we like it. This hot peripheral showed up on
Lenovo's photostream without any explanation, and from the image it seems pretty much like a keyboard-lover's dream; it looks to be wireless, psychotically thin, and boasts an integrated trackpad and numpad. If you've been itching to find a stylish companion to that
ThinkPad USB Portable Secure HD, this may just be the keyboard for you. As expected, no info on pricing or availability, but we'll definitely keep our eyes out for more as it becomes available.
Update: Damn, it looks like this is just a super-hot pic of a new rev of Lenovo's already-released wired UltraNav keyboard -- as our astute commenters have pointed out, it's probably on Flickr because it was posted on Lenovo's
Design Matters blog today. That's not to say we wouldn't take a wireless version of this bad boy in a heartbeat -- feel free to rock us, Lenovo.
Filed under: Peripherals
Mystery ThinkPad keyboard pops up on Lenovo's Flickr page originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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