Evan Blass   Year:by , posted Mar 11th 2006 at 5:00AM   Source Site:engadget

Features Live from CeBIT: Hands-on with the iRiver v10 Live from CeBIT: O2 booth tour Live from CeBIT: Samsung booth tour Music Thing: Sonoric Synth Live from CeBIT: Hands-on with the FRITZ! Mini News Fingertip analyzer could thwart subway bombers Panasonic announces 4GB SDHC SD card Sony expects first Blu-ray Vaios by midyear Samsung SM971P display with tilt and swivel base Sorry, MacTel owners: Windows Vista wont support EFI Siemens SL74X $2,000 encrypted cordless phone FRITZ! Mini: WiFi! phone, MP3! player, and! more Mitac "launches" seven new Mio devices 16GB Iocell CellDisk: worlds largest flash drive BenQ Joybook S73, S61 Core Duo laptops with DVB-T Alienware announces Aurora ALX with quad SLI BeoCom 2 -- the second coming BenQ bulks up digicam line wit...

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Marc Perton   Year:by , posted Mar 11th 2006 at 5:00AM   Source Site:engadget

That long-dreamed-of product, the solid-state laptop, is one step closer to reality, as Samsung is showing off a flash-powered laptop at CeBIT. The demo box uses a 32GB 1.8-inch solid-state drive created by Samsung, to show off the companys flash chops. Unfortunately, at $30 per gigabyte, the 32GB drive would cost over $900. However, with flash prices continuing to decline, and companies like Intel predicting that flash laptops are on their way, we may not have to wait too much longer for this to be feasible -- though, even at over $900, that flash laptop drive sounds mighty tempting....

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Marc Perton   Year:by , posted Mar 11th 2006 at 5:00AM   Source Site:engadget

Remember that Hitachi surveillance robot we checked out a couple of days ago? Well, William Kennedy of MobileRobots in Amherst, NH, took a close look at it and thought he noticed something familiar. No, not the dome, telescoping arm or bright blue body. It was the wheel rims that set him off. According to Kennedy, those gold wheel rims are a dead ringer for rims that were custom made for his companys Pioneer DX bot back in 2002. That bot has been sold in Japan by a company called Revast, which has sold robots to -- you guessed it -- Hitachi. Kennedy thinks that under that dome lurks one of his Pioneer models, purloined and stuffed into a new shell to disguise its true identity. He even created a composite image showing how nicely Pioneer would fit inside Hitachis bot. So, is this a case o...

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Marc Perton   Year:by , posted Mar 11th 2006 at 5:00AM   Source Site:engadget

Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal has taken a look at the revamped MovieBeam service and has found it to be, well, okay. Mossberg seems to really want to like the service, which does have convenience on its side, given that it doesnt require any trips to the video store, mailbox or torrent server. But the "limited selection" of flicks, which "omits many movies that are newly available on DVD" was something of a deal-breaker. Mossberg did like the services UI, remote control and other features, but the lack of current films (and the lack of any Sony films, since the studio hasnt signed up to provide movies to the service) proved to be a major frustration, one that left Mossberg concluding that the best customers for the service would likely be "users who dont like the hassles of ren...

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Marc Perton   Year:by , posted Mar 11th 2006 at 5:00AM   Source Site:engadget

Following LGs lead, Fujitsu-Siemens has announced that it too will avoid taking sides in the Blu-ray/HD DVD war, and will support both platforms. "We dont take a stand in that fight, and actually were very sorry that fight is happening," a Fujitsu-Siemens exec told Reuters. The move isnt exactly a shock: Fujitsu has already declared its neutrality, and Siemens has never endorsed either platform. And Fujitsu-Siemens is hardly a major force in the global market for HD hardware (though they do make the worlds most desirable laptop, which has to count for something). Still, we doubt this makes either Toshiba or Sony very happy. As far as theyre concerned, when it comes to next-gen data and HD media, there can be only one....

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Thomas Ricker   Year:by , posted Mar 11th 2006 at 5:00AM   Source Site:engadget

If like us, you were left well, wanting a bit more information on what exactly the FRITZ! Mini is then check, check, check it. Cause we tracked AVM down on the CeBIT floor and went hands-on with a working prototype of the iPod FRITZ! Mini and are happy to report, it is what they say. The Mini (pictured), does not include any storage for MP3s, those are accessed via 802.11g WiFi from either Memory Stick or USB-equipped MP3 player attached to your FRITZ!Box 7170. The FRITZ!Box will also stream music to the Mini from any UPnP device (yes, that could be your PC) on your home network. And those SMS alerts? Well, indeed they do not offer integration with your cellphone handy (as they are called in Germany), rather these are text messages for land-line owners. We also found out that the devi...

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Marc Perton   Year:by , posted Mar 11th 2006 at 5:00AM   Source Site:engadget

Each week Tom Whitwell of Music Thing highlights the best of the new music gear thats coming out, as well as noteworthy vintage equipment: While the rest of the world speculates frenetically about video iPods and Microsoft tablets, the world of Men Who Like Synthesizers have their own half-baked renders to ponder. This is the Sonoric Synth, a new and as yet unseen synth from Holland, which might possibly surface at the vast MusikMesse trade show in Germany at the end of this month. There are two interesting things about the Sonoric Synth. The first is that it looks quite nice. Obviously this is debatable, but in a world of ugly black plastic boxes, this one looks interesting. It’s quite reminiscent of boutique synths from Scandinavia, and the very covetable boxes made by ...

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Paul Miller   Year:by , posted Mar 11th 2006 at 5:00AM   Source Site:engadget

It looks like Quad SLI systems such as Dells XPS 600 arent long for their current niche status. Units like this $5000 "Prime A Galleria64 Quad-SLI," for example, are starting to hit the market, complete with an Athlon 64 FX-57 processor, 2GB of RAM, and of course the space heater combo of two linked GeForce 7900 SLI setups, with two parent cards in PCI Express slots and two daughter cards bridged by the magic of SLI. Theyll soon be accompanied by desktops from nearly every major manufacturer, which means youll before long youll have plenty more options for quad graphics card setups, and plenty fewer dollars in your wallet at the end of the day. Read: Prime A Galleria64 Read: Other manufacturers get in on the action...

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Evan Blass   Year:by , posted Mar 11th 2006 at 5:00AM   Source Site:engadget

Now that weve learned not to rely on Microsofts Fingerprint Reader for our valuable ones and zeros, were turning towards finger and palm vein reading as the next evolution in data security. This is not the Psychic Hotline type of palm reading that you might be envisioning, but rather refers to devices that use infrared light to scan and algorithms to encode the unique vein pattern on each persons palm or fingers. You can already access your laptop, your bank account, your car, and even your local library with vein identification systems, so it seems natural that your desktop should also get the same level of hardened security- and now it has, in the form of what Akihabara News dubs "the vampire keyboard." Eschewing a numberpad for the vein scanner, this particular keyboard is of the ...

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Thomas Ricker   Year:by , posted Mar 11th 2006 at 5:00AM   Source Site:engadget

If O2 is the best, then Samsung is the biggest. And just to prove it, theyve wheeled out what seems to be every title-holding display theyve ever slapped a "Worlds ..." letterboard on. Click on for a brief history of Samsungs dominating ways on show at CeBIT....

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Marc Perton   Year:by , posted Mar 11th 2006 at 5:00AM   Source Site:engadget

As you no doubt know, TiVo announced a new subscription-based pricing plan earlier this week, and as part of the announcement, discontinued the $299 Product Lifetime pricing plan, declaring that it "was too far in favor of good value to make sense for us financially." However, as TiVos Stephen Mack has now explained, the subscription plans apply only to TiVo boxes purchased from tivo.com. If you buy from a retailer, you purchase what the company now calls "service-only pricing." Why does that matter? Well, as of now, you can still buy a TiVo Series 2 box without a service plan for as little as $39 (after a service-plan rebate). Then, when you go online to sign up for service-only pricing, you can still sign up for the Product Lifetime plan for $299. Total cost: $338 (after rebate), which ...

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