The bladeless fan will be landing on October 21 in two different versions: 25cm for $379, or a 30cm version for $399. Sure, that’s pricey for a fan – but look at it! Look at it and then tell me you don’t want one.

[Dyson Air Multiplier Review on Giz]

The Price

The Air Multiplier runs $US299 for the 10-inch version and $US329 for the 12-inch version. I tested the 10.

The Experience

I’ll admit it, after hearing that Dyson was making a fan, I never imagined what greeted me upon opening the otherwise inconspicuous brown box. It looked like a giant magnifying glass.

I tentatively plugged the all-plastic device in, unsure of the science behind the magic, but not really caring for the moment. I hit a button I could only assume was for power, and the device roared to life like a very wussy hairdryer. My face was greeted with the same quality of air: a relentless, even stream that felt a tad more industrial than residential.

The focused breeze was surprising but not quite hurricane-worthy. (Later I found the air output to measure 450 litres per second. That output is about on par with at least one 10-inch commercial-grade fan shy of the $US200 mark, and a $US30, 8-inch duct fan produced about half that. Most consumer-grade fans don’t disclose air power.)

And, exploring the device more, I realised that while it didn’t look like any fan I’d used before, it worked almost exactly like every fan I’d used before.

For instance, one button toggled oscillation. Another twisted to rev the air speed (a smoother gradient of the traditional low, medium and high controls). And the base could be pushed forward or back, tilting the entire device in a manner more elegant but not entirely different from my $US10 job in the next room.

Indeed, the Air Multiplier was the most beautiful fan I’d ever used, but it was still, at its plebeian heart, a window fan.

How It Works

The bottom grills? Those are for the air intake, powered by what I’m assuming is an internal fan. (Oh, this fan has a fan, you just don’t see it.)

Still, you just barely feel the Multiplier breathing in. As this air is transported up through the device, it makes its way through the “loop amplifier” (that big loopy part), accelerating the air 15-fold as it’s squeezed through a 1.3mm aperture around the ring. Sticking your hand through the loop, you’ll feel air only in front of the ring because that’s where you’ll find the aperture. It’s a mind-bending sensation to say the least.

The Shame

Truthfully, I’m almost embarrassed for liking the Air Multiplier. There’s no doubt that any Dyson vacuum demands a price premium for its fashion-forward design. But ultimately, this premium is relatively small. All good vacuums cost a few hundred bucks, so the Dyson upsell is somewhat reasonable &mdash ;tempting even.

$300 for a fan is far, far from an upsell when I can get 95% of the experience for $US10 at Walmart. Even as a good fan…even as a beautiful fan…even as a clever fan that blocks less window light…even as a safe fan that your toddler or pet can examine without injury…I’m downright humiliated for liking it, especially in this economy.

But like it, I do.

Completely unique design

Safe (no external moving parts)

No doubt, it’s great at fanning

Probably easier to knock-off than a vacuum

Not loud, but far from silent

Costs about a bajillion times more than any fan I’ve ever bought

While borrowing a friend’s car for the day, I decided to have it washed to show my gratitude. I pulled into an automated carwash, and while inside, I couldn’t help but notice how the carwash brushes completely alter their shape from flimsy drooping hair covered rods to massive powerful beams. Could this quality of transformation be applied to the home sector? Where would a transforming apparatus find use in the home?

The carwash brushes go from limp, to cones, to beams. A lamp could use this whimsical feature to direct light, from a tube of light to a cone, to an open light source. The contraption, with its spinning, would produce a rather considerable amount of wind. Ceiling fans have not changed in the slightest ever since their introduction. Apart from finishes and rotation speed, they have always remained rather dull.

I have to agree with that last point — anyone who has shopped for a ceiling fan probably knows that it takes a lot of searching to find something that’s stylish and unique. However, I have to wonder whether or not Dervish would really be functional as a fan. [Phillipe Malouin via dornob]

It’s for unspecified 15 and 17-inch models, but our unibody 15-incher said it didn’t need the update, so it’s probably for previous-gen models confirmed to have bad graphics cards. [Apple via ars]

You know how one out of every twenty iPod fans are incredibly annoying and try to convince you that the iPod is better than what you’ve got? Zune has that too. [Inside the Circle]

Again, nothing’s confirmed just yet, but preliminary testing has shown users who artificially set the MacBook Pro’s cooling fan to 3,000rpm eliminate the screen burn-in issue we told you about earlier this week.

One MacBook Pro user, posting a reply in the Apple Support Forum, said the fans are intended to run at 2,000rpm until default conditions, and then spool up to 3,500 when high-temperature conditions kick in. You know, like what happens when you’re using a GPU like the Nvidia 9600M.

That said, the MacBook Pro is having a little trouble getting it up, so to speak, and remains at about 2,050rpm when the temps rise to the point where the screen begins to flake out. That’s bad.

What’s good is this seems like a simple software fix, at least from the sound of this latest discussion. [Slashgear]

Heating and cooling costs can be a real drain on the bank account, especially when money is tight. This simple $US30 door fan helps push warm or cool air into neighbouring rooms.

Obviously, it’s just a fan—but the fact that it can be installed in the corner of a doorframe means that it will be out of the way—unless you are tall with poor eyesight and mistake it for a really thick cobweb. [Improvements Catalog via Red Ferret]

The fans have three speeds that not only keep you cool, they also whip up your long hair into a dramatic frenzy that is sure to delight the ladies. Available for $US70. [Blowit via TRFJ]

In all seriousness, if chewing makes you sweat, chances are the act of fanning yourself is libel to compound the problem (you may also want to hit the gym). But hey, it’s a fan…shaped like a Wi-Fi icon. Pricing and availability on the “Wave Wireless Air Activator” have not been announced. [Atypyk]

Here are some extra details. It’s going to be $US449 in June, and will come with the speaker fan, a transmitter and the remote, which controls not just volume, but the brightness of the lights.

It’s pretty damn good. Even though it only has one channel playing out of one speaker, shit, it’s still a speaker IN YOUR CEILING FAN. You can sync it up to the other Soundolier speaker lamps (Hunter’s fan is also using the same technology) for a more well-rounded speaker setup. But supposedly the sound gets blasted in a 360-degree spread so the entire room gets covered in that single channel of sound.

As a fan, it’s got Hunter’s fan experience, so although they didn’t turn it up full blast, there was a decent amount of breeze. But, again, it’s a fan with a speaker, so how could you not like it? This IS Gizmodo.