Gadgets
Video Makes Bill Gates Look Cooler Than Steve Jobs (Crazy Talk!)
Posted by Brian Lam at 10:26 PM on January 7, 2008
OMG, I can hear the fanboys battling already. Here's a video from last night's CES 2008 keynote, Bill Gates' last for the foreseeable future. And I know its scripted, edited and contrived, but I'm sold: The man is a cool geek. He's not cool in a fonzie/Jobs kind of way in this video. But very much like how he seemed at total ease with his geekiness and place in the universe at Mossberg and Swisher's All Things D conference the guy just looks happy here. (Especially while playing goofy and modest butt of the joke with this short's star studded cast.) He seems nothing like the anti-antitrust mogul with a killer instinct and "bad taste" we learned to hate in Pirates of Silicon Valley. Fanboys, get to your comment battle stations. Just leave me out of it -- I only wrote the headline.

The Pitch: The 15.4-inch M50S is supposed to be a mobile entertainment rig, with HDMI out and a hybrid TV tuner, plus an auto-dimmer on the screen's backlight. The Catch: The chips (CPU and GFX) are pretty old hat.
The Gear: Ah, convergence at its best. Asus cross-bred a GPS navigator that does 3D maps and real-time traffic info with a typical Taiwanese PMP that handles MP3s, videos and photos in a 1.3-cm thick unit. The touchscreener also uses Bluetooth to verbalise incoming text messages (probably poorly) and dial calls. It's $US400 when it comes out in a couple of weeks. The Hmm: Most mutt devices rarely do everything well, and I hate the gold paintjob. (Granted, that's a personal thing.)
The U2E notebook from ASUS brings a 32GB SSD, an LED backlit panel and a small-lens webcam to an 11-inch, 2-pound, leather notebook. The coolest feature announced so far is definitely the Smart Logon Face Recognition. This software keeps the computer secure by using the webcam to scan the face in front of it and only grant access after a positive facial scan. The U2E will be available in brown or black, but pricing and availability have not yet been announced. See the gallery for more hot pics. [





Kensington just dumped a whole host of in-car peripherals. Here's the lot (all prices quoted in USD.):

























Pioneer execs shuffle us into a dark room, reveal the most critically acclaimed TV made, and then unveil a TV that can kick its ass on contrast. Yes, Pioneer's current Kuro—the "best flat-panel ever"—was shedding light like a sumbitch next to Pioneer's concept Kuro, whose black literally emits no light. So here it is, a strange Battlemodo pitting the super-hot 8th-gen Pioneer plasma against its own future self.






We just got an exclusive look at the super-thin 9mm Kuro plasma concept from Pioneer, and frankly it's hard to believe that it's real at all. It's holy-smokes thin—yes, even 





The Motorola Z10 multimedia phone. We open with a long demo of the Z10, which has built-in video edited tools and a wireless broadband video uplink via HSDPA quadband GSM.
You made us do it fanboys. See one more pic after the jump.









OQO Model 2 just got a 64GB SSD storage option and Sunlight viewable screen [
The sighting: We can't have one of these Alienware curved monitors until the second half of this year, but until then, we've been abducted by its four nearly seamless and sharp screens of DLP goodness. Lit by LEDs, this 2880x900 monster is well over three feet wide and is said to have an other-worldly .02ms response time, great for gaming. The Soylent Green: You can see the seams between this monitor's four segments, but the Alienware humanoids tell us that flaw will be gone by the time this craft lands on Earth. The blacks look a bit washed out to our eyes, too. Price is yet to be determined. 












The Gadget: Linksys' slightly fancier Windows Media Center Extender, which streams the Windows Vista/XP Media Center interface over the network so you can watch live or recorded TV and downloaded files on TV in HD. 


The GoodsThe iRiver Wing is a cute little UMPC with a touchscreen and 4GB of flash storage. It's got Wi-Fi, obviously, and supposedly is instant-on. No word on the battery life. The Catch It runs Windows CE Pro for the OS, and the keyboard looks like it could be difficult to pound on.
The Pitch: Kodak's ESP 3 all-in-one printer, which has a nice black finish and a software feature for facial retouching with "one click" that "reduces blemishes" and enhances facial features. They also claim that it saves 50% ink when compared to similar inkjet printers.
The Gear iRiver's IAMOLED Photo Tank is another PMP, but it's HD-based (80 or 160GB) to SPINN's flash, and its 4.1-inch AMOLED display uses even less more power than passive matrix OLED displays for longer batt. life. It's photo-oriented, with CF and SD slots, though it also does video voice recording, FM and uses the by-this-post-much-hyped SPINN controls. The Catch No price, and the SPINN (PMP, not the controls) is definitely a sexier beast.
The Goods The flash-based SPINN PMP uses iRiver's eponymous SPINN UI, which "combines warmth of analog controls" with digital content—apparently this means a wheel of some sort. It's stacked PMP-wise, otherwise: 3.2-inch 480x272 screen, FM tuner, flash, Bluetooth, dictionary and 30fps MP4 playback. The shell and UI are also really attractive for a PMP of this flavor, which are usually barely less ugly than glossy roadkill. The Catch: Um, are "analog controls" really a feature?
Here is the first look at Linksys' new UltraRange Plus N-routers. First up is the WRT160N, a sub-$US100 router, and next is the WRT310N. Check out the gallery below to see them in all of their sleek and sexy goodness. [





Audio-Technica released the QuietPoint ATH-ANC3 active noise-cancelling in-ear headphones today. They say that the battery-powered ear buds block out 85% of all outside noise. We don't understand the point. Since in-ear headphones already cancel outside noise by design, some of the technology here is doing double duty. Still, we guess it's some kind of statement of mind-blowing, macho technology, so like... "sweet." See a full product pic after the jump. [
Ridata introduced three SSDs today, in 32-, 64-, and 128GB capacities. We've seen SSDs this large before, but Ridata claims 170MB/sec read and 105MB/sec write speeds, blowing out