ELECTRONICS
Honey, I shrunk the tech!
July 25, 2008
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Rob Wright
YOURHOME.CA
In what seems like the blink of an eye, tiny multi-function communication and entertainment devices have taken over the world of consumer electronics -- witness the long-awaited arrival in Canada earlier this month of Apple's iPhone, a million sold in a week. These gadgets are packing more and more features into their little frames -- text messaging, telephony, email, Web browsing, music playback, digital photography, the kitchen sink -- for a price affordable to an ever-growing number of end users.
Although it has generated the most headlines, the iPhone is just one of a flurry of miniature marvels that merit our attention.
San Francisco-based Pure Digital Technologies has rolled out a lineup of micro digital camcorders called the Flip, which though clearly not of professional quality, are capable of pretty decent video for their price point. The original Flip is just over 4x2.25x1.25 inches (h/w/d) and weighs 5.2 ounces. It records video at a resolution of 640x480 pixels and, with its 1GB of internal memory, you should get about an hour of video recording. It also has a built-in microphone and speaker and 1.5 inch (diagonal) LCD screen. You'll get about two hours use out of two AA Alkaline batteries or up to five hours if you use Lithium batteries. The Flip, which has a USB port for connecting to your PC, sells for about $130. Its more stylish and full-featured siblings, the Flip Ultra and the sleeker Flip Miro, are about $150 and $180 respectively.
Speaking of tiny video, a collaboration between Texas Instruments and Thai tech firm Optoma is set to bear its first fruit: the Pico, which it hails as the "world`s smallest projector." Weighing a mere 4 ounces, the iPod-sized Pico will fit in your shirt pocket. But when connected to other digital media players, it is capable of projecting video and images at up to 100 times their original size on a wall or screen of your choice. Pico uses light emitting diode technology, which Sony is using with impressive results on its next generation of big screen TVs, so quality should be top notch. Price is expected to be about $300 when released later this year.
Sony is offering up a quirky egg-sized gadget called the Rolly, which it labels a Sound Entertainment Player, but which is actually a robotic thingy that sort of dances as it plays back your music -- it moves its various appendages to the music and puts on a light show as well. Rolly comes with stereo speakers and a digital amplifier and 2GB of memory for storing about 500 songs, but also uses Bluetooth so you can wirelessly stream music from your MP3 player. Its rechargeable battery allows up to 5 hours of continuous music, or about 4 hours with its motion feature activated. The Rolly comes in a variety of colours and you can use the Rolly Choreographer software to program your own moves, then upload and exchange your creations with others on the Web. Price is about $400. Novelty or must have gadget? Decide yourself by checking out video at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTxdKi77G20 .
With all the recent talk about the dangers of cellphone overuse, heavy users should look into getting a wireless headset to keep phones away from ears. The BT8040 from Jabra weighs a minuscule 10 grams - about one-third of an ounce - and uses Bluetooth wireless technology to communicate with your phone. It comes with a variety of digital signal processing technology to optimize audio and protect your ears from sudden volume spikes. Price: about $100.
The iPhone's incredible success hasn't been lost on PC makers, who've been busy shrinking their laptops and carving out a whole new consumer genre in the process - so new in fact there's still no consensus on what it should be called, though netbooks, mobile PCs, surf notebooks or similar variations are being bandied about.
The Asus Eee PC 2G is typical of this new breed. It comes with a 900MHz Intel Celeron M 353 processor, 512MB of RAM, a 7-inch LCD screen, a suite of software than runs on its Linux operating system and weighs in at a mere 2 pounds. What makes it unique is that it has replaced a traditional hard drive with a 2GB Secure Digital card, and has 802.11b/g wireless capability built in for high-speed connection to the Internet. Even better, it has a shockproof design and a price point that starts just north of $300.