Posted 04/24/09 at 06:26:51 PM by Gordon Mah Ung

Geeks have to be suckers for Bluetooth headsets. Don’t believe me? I have purchased no fewer than five Bluetooth headsets ranging from Plantronics, to Cardo and Motorola in the last two years.

Among the most disappointing was the Voyager 855. Although it fit my tiny ear canals well, the reliability of it was, well, everything you’ve come to expect of a Bluetooth headset. Sometimes it would connect with my admittedly mediocre Windows Mobile phone and sometimes it wouldn’t.

It didn’t help that the audio levels were just too low. At least the noise cancellation was top notch. Still, I had to chuck it for two Cardo units: The S-640 and the S-800. I had the highest hopes for the S-640 clip-on unit and carded ear piece. Unfortunately, incoming sound quality was dismal and the lack of noise cancellation made conversations in my beater with original struts impossible. Did I mention that it too was quite flakey with the Bluetooth connection. The S-800, however, was quite reliable. It locked onto my phone and worked fine. The volume was also almost painfully loud when set to max. The UI was good and the quick dial feature that let you access the first few slots in your speed dial was awesome.

I only use my headset in my car and turn it off when not in use. Initially I could get a week or two without having to recharge it. That turned into a week and now it seems like it needs to visit the charger every three days.

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Posted 04/09/09 at 06:04:37 PM by Andy Salisbury

When the iPod first boomed in popularity there were companies lining up around the block to sell accessories designed for the digital music player, and now it’s the netbook’s turn. The first generation of netbook-oriented accessories officially launched this week, and there’s little doubt that they’ll be the last to jump aboard this gravy train.

Kensington announced five products aimed at users of the tiny portables this week, and while the tiny wired and wireless mice ($14.99 and $24.99 respectively) won’t turn any heads, other items such as the power adapter (with a built in USB port for some extra charging power) do show off some solid insight ($49.99). And, if you’re concerned about your netbook’s safety or looks, you can snag the security lock ($24.99) or the sleeve ($14.99).

You can get all of these starting today off of Kensington’s website, or you can wait around until they end up on store shelves within a couple weeks.

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Posted 01/07/09 at 07:11:38 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Toshiba has expanded its Qosmio and Satellite laptop families. Up first is the new Qosmio X305-Q725 that has been designed keeping the gamer in mind. The notebook has a 17-inch display and derives all its muscle from an Intel Core 2 Quad processor and its NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX GPU. As for storage, it has a 64GB SSD. The design is unpalatable and nearly every sensible man can be expected to bristle at its very sight. The ugly Qosmio can be yours for $2,699.99 only.

Toshiba has also unveiled a 15-inch budget notebook under its Satellite sub-brand with a price tag of $549. The Satellite L305-S5921 is a no-frills notebook with a T3400 Pentium processor, 2GB of DDR2 SDRAM, a 160GB HDD and 128MB of Intel integrated graphics.

The Satellite E105-S1402 is the third notebook to have been launched. It has a 14-inch display, an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 processor, 320GB HDD, 4GB memory and 320GB HDD. It is available now for 1,199.

Lastly, Toshiba has also rolled out customized color lids for many of its Protégé family of notebooks.

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