Reviewing the Kindle is a unique challenge. No matter what cool technology is inside of it, no matter how many buttons or how long the battery lasts, it’s still a device that’s inherently designed to read books, a task that takes time. This isn’t something that you pick up to consume your media quickly and randomly, like an iPod or a mobile phone. It’s an investment in not only dollar terms, but also time.

The very first thing you notice about the Kindle when you take it out of its (expediently delivered) box is that its screen is on. Or at least it looks that way. No matter how many times you read or are told that e-ink displays draw no power unless they are changing, it’s still weird to see an image on the screen when turned off, which is what happens every time you flick the switch on the Kindle.

The second thing is that Amazon looked long and hard at the iPod original iPhone before designing the Kindle. Thin and white on the front, brushed aluminium on the back with a section of plastic, presumably for the built-in SIM card. Sure there are more buttons on the front of the Kindle, but this device is made for reading books, not watching video or listening to music. But the similarity in design is unmistakeable.

The device comes pre-loaded with a guide on how to use the device, as well as a dictionary. Scrolling through the guide will give you a good idea of how the device works, but rather than sit through that, I opted to get straight to downloading from Amazon’s store.

According to Laura Porco, Director of Merchandising at Amazon, the Australian Store launched last week with about 280,000 titles, which has swelled to about 288,000 this week. The US Store has about 370,000 books available to download for the Kindle. But apparently the books available for Australians aren’t a subset of the 370,000 US books – we have books the US doesn’t, they have books we don’t… And the same is true for all the new markets the Kindle is selling in. Amazon is working with local publishers and authors to try and add more content all the time. Doing a quick search of readily known Aussie authors, I got a lot of empty searches: Thomas Keneally, Matthew Riley, Kate Forsyth and Banjo Paterson all turned up blanks. Fantasy writer Ian Irvine’s Human Rites trilogy is available, but that’s it. Tara Moss, for better or worse, has a couple of books available too. Still, given time, we’ll only see more Aussie authors pop up on the device.

The built-in 3G Whispernet service works pretty well. It uses an AT&T SIM card and a global roaming arrangement, which doesn’t actually cost you anything – there are no subscription fees or mobile data plans involved. There is a slight premium on book purchases, but we’ll get to that later. Exactly what network it works on in Australia is unknown – Amazon were as tight lipped as Apple about specific details, and looking at AT&Ts roaming website, it looks like they have arrangements with all the Aussie telcos. In any case, downloading a book takes less than a minute – even for something as chunky as War and Peace.

Actually using the device is pretty easy. The next page buttons are big and conveniently located – it’s easy to walk and read – easier than with a real book, anyway. The keyboard’s kinda horrible, but considering it has limited use (both searching for books, searching for text within a book or taking notes), it’s not a big deal. It’s certainly no worse than using touchscreen input on a Winmo or Android device.

What some people may find irritating is the slow refresh rate of the e-ink screen. In a world where LCDs have 2ms refresh rates, the fact that it seems to take almost a second to change the image on screen could prove frustrating. Personally, it doesn’t phase me considering it takes about the same amount of time to turn a page, but that’s just me. In any case, e-ink is an ideal format for a digital book – reading in bright sunlight is no problems whatsoever, unlike an LCD.

Another potential issue for customers is the fact that everything is in US dollars. both the device itself, and the books you purchase for it, are all charged in US dollars. While that’s all well and good now, while the Aussie dollar is kicking arse and taking names, if it drops down to the 50 cent mark again, you’ll end up paying almost double for the same book. Amazon may change this in the future – they said that they’re running everything out of their US site for convenience rather than profit – although they refuse to comment specifically on future plans. As it stands, you can grab classics for $US2.99, with new releases going for $US11.99, and a whole raft of pricing in between.

If the dollar does crash though, it’s worth noting that the Kindle does read mobipocket files, which you can copy over via the included USB cable. By checking out Project Gutenburg, you can download hundreds of out of copyright books for free and read them on the Kindle. It also does plain txt files, although there are some weird formatting issues with that…

While we’re on the topic of the USB cable, it’s also worth mentioning that the device doesn’t come with a wall charger, just a USB cable. Not so big a deal, until you discover (as Jen Dudley at the Courier Mail did in her review) that the Kindle won’t charge with a USB wall charging adaptor – it only works plugged into your PC. Weird decision on Amazon’s part.

A couple of other things I haven’t mentioned: You can change the font size easily, which is great for those with weaker vision, and the text-to-speech functionality is included as well. It sounds kinda freaky, and you’ll probably never use it, but it’s there for books that publishers have allowed it to work on. You can also subscribe to Newspapers and magazines from around the world (there’s a free two week trial), although most of the pictures have been pulled out. Oh, and no Australian publications yet either, which kind of kills the allure for me. Finally, you can use the inbuilt dictionary to look up any word in any book, which is a great way of expanding that vocab of yours.

So now here’s the question: Is it worth it? It’s $US259 worth of gadget, plus the cost of books. As many detractors have said before, that initial cost is worth a lot of books. And the whole “convenience of carrying 1500 books with you” thing isn’t really practical, as much as it’s cool.

But here are my thoughts – comparing the Kindle to an iPod is a bit misleading. If you think about it, listening to music has always required some kind of device to play the music back, whereas reading has only ever required a book. So the simple truth is that there’s no need to own a Kindle. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. It’s a well-built, easy to use and convenient device that can offer an immense level of satisfaction. Because of the size, and weight (or lack thereof), you can carry the Kindle with you everywhere, and read little by little much easier than carrying a book and having to bookmark the page when you stop. In the past week, I’ve read more than I have in a while – even reading several books concurrently, something I’ve never ever done.

So while it’s not a necessary purchase for booklovers, it’s certainly a good one, especially for the geeks among us.

[Kindle on Giz]

What the &*^@ is Micro Four Thirds? Olympus and Panasonic co-developed what’s called the Micro Four Thirds standard just last year. The biggest difference to the eye is the smaller-than-SLR lens mount that incompatible with SLRs unless you deploy an adaptor. Internally, the standard ditches the mirrors used in SLRs and uses a four thirds CMOS (not micro four thirds chip!) to capture the image straight from the lens (just like a point and shoot). That sensor is roughly 30% smaller than that found in your average dSLR but 9 times bigger than what’s in your average point and shoot. The result is a camera ever so slightly smaller than a dSLR that should give you a similar end image quality.

The end camera is just a tad smaller than a baseline dSLR:

But it’s still way bigger than your average point and shoot:

The big not-so-secret
There are only four products on the market at this point (Panasonic G1, its video-centric brother, the GH1, Olympus E-P1 and, of course, the Panasonic GF1), and they all have the exact same 13MP Panasonic sensor. But only the latest two, the GF1 and the E-P1, have taken advantage of the smaller technology to create design-forward cameras.

The spoiler
However, if you’re going to buy one of these cameras, you probably want the GF1 ($900 with 14-45mm lens). It couples all the good stuff from Panasonic’s existing line with a retro body that’s eerily similar to the Olympus E-P1.

The build
The GF1 is too big, and it’s too heavy. The Panasonic GF1 is indeed smaller than my Canon XTi, but it still won’t fit in your pocket.

Yet I love carrying it around. Why? The body feels solid, as if it’s from another era, a Utopian time when men were men and companies built hardware to last—before we valued sissy silver painted plastic more than the metal it was emulating.

The GF1 (and the Olympus E-P1 for that matter) feels like a small tank in your hands, an element of war that won’t give up after being tossed in a bag recklessly. If dropped on an iPod from over 3 feet, the iPod would certainly be crushed.
There are neither too many buttons nor too few. A familiar circle rotates between shooting modes naturally and burst and timer modes share a switch right in front of it. A d-pad toggles functions like ISO while a clever clicking dial allows you to adjust shutter speed and f-stops.
A few buttons earn their very own functions, like focusing mode, exposure lock and, maybe most cleverly, video. Hitting this little button to the right of the shutter release switches you to video no matter what mode you’re in.

Given the almost retro-style build, however, it was tough for me to lose an optical viewfinder (though a digital optical add-on is available). It’s a heavy camera to hold outstretched while framing shots on the viewfinder. But luckily, the 3-inch LCD’s 460,000 pixels mean you can just manage to find critical focus, thanks to the screen auto-zooming to your subject during manual focusing, though it can be tough to be sure you’ve really nailed it.

That screen resolution is below a premium dSLR, but it’s about twice as sharp as the E-P1—and you’ll notice.
And then there’s the flash. Unlike the E-P1, the GF1 has one of these bad boys, and Panasonic has celebrated that fact by designing what must be the most complicatedly mechanical flash on the market. Watching it snap from the camera body is both impressive and worrisome. Can these little struts really hold up? Regardless, it’s handy to have, even though a perk of buying such a big, expensive camera is avoiding flash photography.

The pictures
Check out all of my GF1 test shots on Flickr, untouched JPEGs pulled right off the GF1.

Honestly, there’s not much we can say about the quality of the GF1’s sensor that hasn’t been said (by us, even.) The biggest particular problem is ISO noise, as you can see in the gallery below. Bottom line: the GF1 supports ISOs up to 3200, but you probably don’t want to reach beyond 800.
However, with that disclosure out of the way, I’d like to make a few points.

1. Shooting on the GF1 feels like shooting on an SLR. I’m not just talking about the ease of tweaking advanced controls. I mean, you pull the trigger, the camera takes a shot RIGHT THEN. For dSLR owners, that’s nothing new. For P&S owners, that’s a revelation.

2. There is undoubtedly more noise with Panasonic’s sensor in high ISOs than you could find in dSLRs for a similar price. But, the image quality you can achieve—I mean that intangible mix of sensor size and great glass that makes your photos feel professional—is undoubtedly beyond the realm of point and shoots, well in the SLR ballpark.

The BEST shot I was able to recreate of that watch above on my Canon P&S?
Needless to say, pretty gross stuff.

3. The Live View system features what’s, hands down, the best function I’ve ever see on any Live View system yet. Holding a Shutter Mode Effect button previews the motion blur you can expect in your final shot—saving you the heartache of the perfect preview and horrible blurry-faced end product we’ve all experience on point and shoots.
The only catch? The system didn’t work well in daylight, when you might want to use Live View to preview sports motion blur. Note that this car didn’t blur at all in my preview, nor did about 20 similar test shots I took in identical conditions.
However, low light tests worked fine.

The 720P video I’d describe as solid but not extraordinary. The AVCHD (or motion JPEG) video, while inherently better than P&S systems or Mino HDs, is not razor sharp. Without side by side comparisons or the wonderful popping colours you get with a bit of sunlight (it rained through my entire testing period), I can’t make any definitive statements. But what I’ve seen from the T1i seems better (richer colours, sharper figures), and not just because it’s 1080P.

Versus the EP-1
There are definitely a few key advantages to buying a GF1 instead of Olympus’ E-P1. They include:

• Sharper screen
• Faster autofocus (I’d estimate about 3x faster—it’s noticeable)
• Built-in flash (the Olympus requires an optional mount)

But it should be noted, the E-P1 has its image stabilisation inside its body while Panasonic relies on its IS kit lens. In other words, every lens the Olympus uses will have inherent image stabilisation. Also, Olympus allows autofocusing on all Micro Four Thirds and Four Thirds lenses. The GF1 can accept these lenses, but it only retains autofocus on its own brand. In other words, lens fanatics may find the E-P1 the better bet. And if you find one or the other on some super sale, well, it’s a toss-up.

Confession
The real reason I enjoyed shooting on the GF1, and the real reason you’re interested in Micro Four Thirds if you are indeed interested, has nothing to do with practicality.

I just feel cool using it.
I like walking around Chicago with the GF1 on my shoulder. It gives me that feeling of Leica superiority without the expense. The Micro Four Thirds system may have originated in Japan, but the romance of shooting on the latest systems is purely European. For the first time in a long time, a piece of electronics has made me long for an era and a place that I never knew.

Every soccer mum tourist in Chicago has a dSLR. They may take prettier photos than I do, but damn do I long to be different once in a while. And I’m here to say that, if you crave a Micro Four Thirds for the same reason, it’s my opinion that the GF1 works well enough that, well, that’s OK. I’m just not trading my dSLR for one.

Incredibly solid build

Best screen in class

Unique shutter blur preview

General stylishness and badassery

Video is good, not great

Same CMOS found in earlier version/competition

IS in kit lens, not camera

The original Mino HD was one of the simplest, easiest-to-use pocket cams out there. Its video quality was nothing to write home about (and paled in comparison to, say, the Kodak Zi8), but it sold boatloads based on its good looks and respectable performance. So what does the new Mino HD bring to the table?

What’s New
The new Mino HD definitely feels better in the hand than its predecessor. It’s only marginally smaller (about 1.5 millimeters thinner, same width and height) but the upgrade to aluminium from glossy plastic makes it feel much more solid and expensive. The other improvements are welcome as well—the new screen is both larger (2 inches compared to 1.5) and significantly sharper, and it’s now packing 8GB of internal memory, twice that of the first Mino HD. That 8GB of memory allows for about two hours of 720p recording. Also new is an HDMI-out jack for sharing videos on HD screens, and it also boasts a faster processor (I didn’t see a difference in performance, but Flip says battery life is improved).

What’s Unchanged, but Shouldn’t Be
As it’s packing the same sensor as the first Mino HD, this new version shares the same strengths and suffers from the same flaws: Good in solid lighting and close-ups, but noisy in low-light and choppy while panning. It still can’t take stills, there’s no optical zoom, and there’s no image stabilizer. Also unchanged are those damn touch-sensitive buttons. I accidentally hit the “Play” touch-button several times because you don’t have to depress an actual, tactile button to make commands, which is super annoying. Tactile buttons would be a lot more accurate and result in less accidental presses.

As always, we should mention that the days of dedicated pocket cams like the Mino HD are numbered. They’re surrounded on all sides, with the iPod Nano hitting them from the low-end and smartphones hitting them from the high. Since convergence is already killing PMPs, we don’t see this kind of gadget lasting all that much longer. That being said…

The Flip Mino HD is a solid choice for a pocket cam, since it’s sort of the distillation of what the pocket cam category aims for: It’s dead simple, to a fault sometimes, takes decent but not amazing video, and is sleek and pocketable. We’d really have liked to see some improvements to the Mino HD’s sensor (as well as the merciless execution of those touch-buttons), but overall it’s still a pretty decent cam. This new version sells for $US230, while the older 4GB model drops to $US200—and we’d say the improvements are worth the extra $US30 if you’re torn between the two. The Flip Mino HD is available now.

Solid-feeling aluminium case

Doubled memory, bigger and better screen, and HDMI-out are welcome additions

Dead simple UI, but it lacks more advanced features

Video quality is okay, but unchanged from last-gen

Touch-sensitive buttons seem designed purely to infuriate

Price $US1600 as tested.

Our Configuration Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz, 4GB DDR3 RAM, slot-load Blu-ray player/DVD burner, NVIDIA GeForce GT230M with 1GB dedicated RAM, 23-inch 1080P multitouch display, and a slew of inputs, including 6 USB, a card reader, coax, S-Video, HDMI, audio and composite.

What’s New This is the third generation Touchsmart. The two-point, IR-based multitouch PC remains thematically unchanged, but the combination of hardware and software is finally gelling. The new stuff includes:

— Windows 7
— HDMI-in
— Updated TouchSmart UI
— Custom Hulu, Netflix, Twitter and Absurdly Cool Recipe Book Apps
— HD Tuning (not CableCard)
— Fully customisable LED under-lighting
— Tilting webcam

The Hardware You’ll recognise the body design as almost unchanged from the last generation, but that’s not necessarily a strike against the TouchSmart. While the body is mostly plastic, the high gloss black is unoffensive, and good for making screen colours pop like an HDTV. A majority of the TV-style input set is cleverly hidden behind a panel, should you prefer the seamless look.

As for that screen, it’s as good as any low to mid-tier LCD HDTV, but its multitouch is not quite perfect. If you pace your movements, it’s about 95% accurate at tracking your fingers. If you don’t, that number drops to 85%. And should the system be strained with a lot of multimedia tasking, the touch only gets worse. But I make this all sound a lot worse than it is. No, the screen isn’t as accurate/wonderful as capacitive tech, but it’s a lot better than resistive.

The wireless low profile keyboard and mouse are both understated and completely functional. And a decent remote gives the whole package that home theatre feel for when you need to do a little IR blasting.

Audio dribbles through a soundbar sits under the screen. The quality is passable for television, but there’s potential here for improvement—the highs are tinny and there’s not real bass. Music lovers will want standalone speakers (which is too bad, because everything else is great.)

But again, I almost hate saying bad things about the build because what the TouchSmart does right is sooo cool: the software.

The Littlest Media Mogul

If you just want to multitouch way through Windows 7, the TouchSmart allows that. But to really take advantage of the system, you’ll want to use the TouchSmart interface and the wonderful, custom apps. Sure, you can mess with photos, take hand-drawn notes and watch video clips, but here’s the more notable stuff. (Check out the video above to see some of these apps in motion.)

Netflix
I couldn’t enjoy the Netflix interface more. Flick through your library, click a movie and just wait for the server to stream it. It’s probably the slickest Netflix skin I’ve seen to date.

Ambient Lighting
It’s technically a series of LEDs under the monitor, but Ambient Lighting makes its way into the apps section since you can choose from the entire spectrum of colours through a touch interface. The glowing effect, while a tad cheesy, is incredible customizable.

Twitter
Tweetie is my client of choice on Mac. Most all of the advanced functionality is duplicated here. And if you really want to, you can type on the onscreen keyboard. It works, but I’ll take the real thing, thanks.

Live TV/DVR
It’s easy to get mixed up in the submenus and the software is obviously resource intensive, but otherwise, you’re working with a fully-functional HD DVR (sitting on top the core of WMC, as I understand it). Flicking through programming guides is surprisingly natural.

Hulu
Stuck in an update loop, I couldn’t test hulu. Given the quality of HP’s other bundled apps, especially Netflix, I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Music
The music app is super smart because it incorporates MP3s, Pandora and Rhapsody into, well, not exactly one interface but at least one basic app. Browsing albums is smooth in a Cover-Flow-like spread. Pandora is a bit disappointing in that most of the UI is spent on the Pandora logo. But it works.

Recipe Box
Despite the failings of in my tech demo above, this little app is embarrassingly fun. Through a built-in browser, you can rip any recipe containing “directions” and “ingredients” from almost any webpage. With one button, the recipe appears in your own book, formatted like everything else in your collection. Now, should you have your hands full, the system supports voice commands to read you the recipe. It didn’t work in my demo video, but even when it did, the system fulfilled all the stereotypes of poor voice commands and text-to-speech. Still, Recipe Box is a clever way to bring an all-in-one into the kitchen.

The one downfall here is that HP has designed TouchSmart to run all of the bundled apps at once. You’re truly multitasking, and that means stacking HDTV, hulu, netflix, photo editing, a browser, Twitter, and even more video playback. The system generally handles itself admirably, but the TV tuning definitely tips the scales on occasion (just watch the video for interface stutters). If I were to use the system as my DVR on a regular basis, I’d probably cut down the fat on HP’s apps and buy myself some resources.

Another point to mention is that, while you can customise HP’s dock with any apps you like, those not designed by HP (say, Microsoft Word) will merely link you to the full app in Windows. So you can’t work on a term paper in the fancy media interface, but then again, you probably don’t want to.

Oh, and for some reason, the back button within apps often brings you back to the same information in a different view than you started with. That’s a perfect candidate for a patch if I’ve ever seen one.

Like, Not Love I want to love the TouchSmart 600, but I just really, really like it a lot. The functionality is all there; no one can question the full media suite of apps, like Netflix, hulu, and Twitter, let alone the full Windows 7 OS sitting right behind HPs optional software. It’s the light performance hiccups coupled with a less than 100% touch interface that stop me from screaming at the top of my lungs, “YOU SHOULD BUY THIS RIGHT NOW OR GIVE UP ON LIFE COMPLETELY.”

But maybe you should buy the TouchSmart 600 right now. Other than Sony’s upcoming Vaio L, there’s no all-in-one quite like this on the market. Coupled with a netbook, you’d have portability and an entire media centre at your disposal. The combo, for something like a dorm room or small apartment, would be unquestionably wonderful.

Versatile media platform

Neat, functional apps

Full Windows 7 sits a click away

A reasonable home theatre replacement

Imperfect, but decent multitouch

Speakers sound pretty lousy

DVR tends to slow the whole system

The Difference

The PlayStation 3 Slim is actually more similar to the current PlayStation 3 fat than you’d think. Sony has been slowly phasing out features in the PS3 for a while, dumping USB ports, dumping card readers and dumping the PlayStation 2 backward compatibility. So the step to a Slim, now, isn’t actually that steep, compared to what you’d get if you switched from a launch PS3.

What you do get with the Slim is a smaller size, a reduced power consumption rate and a lower price. The lower power usage partially comes from the 45nm manufacturing process, and provides a 34 per cent decrease in power consumption. (It’s also 32 per cent smaller and 36 per cent lighter). And, the Slim adds the ability to bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD audio, which only matters if you’re an audiophile with a modern sound system. You also get a new matte finish, which makes the console look less “premium”, but eliminates the crazy fingerprint and dust problem the original had. Overall, it’s a net gain in goodness.

The Experience

Because it’s basically the same console, the only differences you’re going to notice are audible ones. Like we said in our hands on, the disc drive in the PS3 Slim is louder than in the original PlayStation 3. Think of it like a laptop optical disc drive vs. a desktop optical disc drive. When you’re seeking around, it makes a louder grinding noise than its larger counterpart. This noise makes no difference in Blu-ray movie watching, since it’s all sequential, and is only occasionally encountered in games, especially since many game install bits and pieces to the hard drive.

Other than that, yeah, it plays the same games, and it watches the same Blu-ray movies.

The Takeaway

Think about the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation 3 Slim like this. You have two wives (I don’t know, imagine you’re Bill Paxton). Ninety-five percent of the time, they both do pretty much the same things. One is slightly chubbier, the other is slightly svelter. The skinnier one is quieter most of the time, but can get yappy when she can’t find something. The thinner one also costs you a little less money, and…has a matted finish? This metaphor isn’t going anywhere good, but you get the point. They’re basically the same console, except now it’s thinner and cheaper.

So the only question now is whether or not you should buy a PlayStation 3 now, or wait until September for the PS3 Slim. Both options are $499.95, but if you want the ability to install Linux, you’ll have to get the PlayStation 3 fat. Then again, the three of you who want that probably already have a PS3.

By lowering the price and making a more economical console, Sony’s finally more or less evened the hardware landscape with Microsoft, and continued to ensure that the PS3 is still the best-value-for-your-money Blu-ray player. Now all that’s left is getting some more games on there. [Amazon]

Lighter, thinner, less power hungry

Way less fingerprinty

Matted finish and new “squarer” styling might appeal to some, repulse others

Needs a $US24 stand to be stable in the vertical position

Continues the tradition of removing features (USB ports, backward compatibility, Linux support) in the PS3 to lower the price

The Price: TBD, at least as far as subsidised carrier deals go.

The Verdict: The Omnia HD does everything fine, and a few things extremely well. Video playback is top notch and widely compatible, the camera is among the best I’ve ever seen on a mobile phone, and the video recording can actually hang with a lot of pocket cams, like the Flip of Kodak Zi series. On all other counts the phone never falls flat, but it never really shines, either.

The hardware: Your first impression of the Omnia HD is that it’s big, but that’s not really fair: It’s a tall device, but it’s not meaningfully larger than any of the other popular touchscreen phones on the market today—it’s just proportioned differently. And for all the hardware crammed inside, it’s reasonably thin. Speaking of which, the guts: It’s got HSDPA (on European bands), GPS, 8-16GB of internal storage with microSD expansion, and 8MP, 720p-recording camera sensor, a built-in flash bulb, a forward-facing video camera, USB connector and a 3.5mm jack. It’s a healthy phone, hardware-wise.

Samsung touts the AMOLED screen over anything else, and with some good reason. It’s vibrant and sharp, but side by side with an iPod Touch, it isn’t strikingly better. The benefits of the OLED, such as they are, seem to manifest themselves more in a healthy battery life than anything else. In terms of touch, it’s a capacitive panel, and it’s extremely responsive. Any lag or difficulties with the onscreen keyboard are entirely down to the software.

Mobile Phone cameras are generally horrible, so the Omnia HD’s camera is a rare treat. Seriously: I trusted it to shoot a <a href=”I even trusted it to shoot this Klipsch Image S4i review last week. “>product review last week, and it definitely came through. It’ll match a low-end point-and-shoot in most situations, barring low-light—the sensor can’t really handle darker situations too well, and the flash is pretty wimpy—and fast-motion scenes. Video, on the other hand, is at least pocket-cam quality. In daylight it’s razor-sharp at 720p, while in low light it’s passable. It doesn’t quite match up to the best-of-the-bunch Zi8, for example, but it’s surprisingly close. On a mobile! When did this happen?

The Software: This is where things fall apart a little. Wherever the Omnia HD hardware shines—along with the kickass camera, it can handle HD video playback in plenty of codecs—the software is fine. The camera interface and media playback interfaces, music and video, are never distracting a usually do what you expect. Elsewhere, though, there are problems.

Samsung’s thrown the old Omnia’s TouchWiz widget UI, originally designed for Windows Mobile, onto the Symbian-powered HD. This in itself is fine, since TouchWiz has always been a decent, finger-friendly homescreen. Outside of the three homescreen panels, though, is a bizarre UI stew, some from Symbian 5.0, some from Samsung, and some from the deepest bowels of hell. For example: Scrolling! Instead of throwing menus and selecting entries, the selection follows your finger. It’ hard to explain, but it’s a terrible way to manage a menu-heavy operating system. The onscreen keyboard seems to be a Samsung special too. It’s fine—it’s spacious and rarely lags—but it’s set on a perfect grid, doesn’t come with any autocorrect and feels like it was designed in about an hour.

Outside of a few areas, the phone is a fairly raw take on Symbian, which means the UI is inconsistent and difficult to tackle with fingers, and seems to insert needless steps all over the place. Want to enter a URL? Press a button, type your address, press another button, and press another. It doesn’t make any sense. Functionally, though, it holds up fine: The browser could be easier to navigate with, but renders with WebKit, supports Flash and generally does its job. Same goes for pretty much everything else: the experience could be smoother, but you’d be hard pressed to find a task that the HD can’t handle. And if you do find a gap, remember: This is full Symbian, so you can always go app hunting. As dumb as the UI can be, don’t be fooled into thinking this is a dumbphone: it can do pretty much anything an Android or Windows Mobile phone can, just a little more awkwardly. [Samsung]

The Price: $US100

The Verdict: At just $US20 more than Apple’s In-Ear headset, the Klipsch Image S4i is a no-brainer, assuming Voice Control and VoiceOver are priorities to you. If they don’t matter, or if you’ve got an older iPhone or non-Apple handset, the choice is less clear.

Klipsch’s headset is one of the only ones on the market with Apple’s VoiceOver-compatible chip—a feature we raised a stink about when it first came out, but which turned out to be alright. As far as 3G Shuffle headphones go, this is about as nice as you’re going to get. The sound will suit most tastes, but not all: it’s extremely clear, and bass is smooth and deep, but never overpowering. Overall the sound reminds me of the V-Moda Vibe Duos—always a reliable standby for better-than-stock iPhone headsets—except slightly more resolved, and less muddy. What this headset doesn’t have, though, is the kind of razor-sharp presence that you’d find in headphones like the Shure SE115, or headsets like the (markedly more expensive) Etymotics hf2, or the powerful percussiveness of some of Altec Lansing’s UE rebrands. (More on those here.) Isolation and cable movement noise are better than I expected from tips made from rubbery material like this, as is fit: both are excellent, though fans of foam or foam-rubber tips will have to go aftermarket.

Mic quality is fine, too. The Image S4i’s mic sits below your shin, nestled inside the inline controls. It’s a natural location, and the headset’s buttons, which include volume controls, were easy to find and press, though the whole unit is a little slippery for sweaty exercise fingers. The mic, or its location, probably, gave my voice a boomier sound than I got from the Vibes or the Etymotics, though I remained completely intelligible, and background noises, like the mic bouncing off my shirt, or even a rickety old air conditioner, were very hard to notice on the other end of the line. As a bonus, these headsets work in the headphone jack on Unibody MacBooks, for VoIP use.

With Shuffle and 3GS compatibility comes one pretty massive hitch:
That’s Klipsch’s official compatibility chart, and they’re not kidding. If your device isn’t on this list, don’t expect much: older iPhones get basic play/pause functionality out of the inline remote, while the 1G Touch doesn’t recognise it at all. Phones from other manufacturers, including HTC and Samsung, didn’t recognise remote or mic input. The Image S4i isn’t just 3GS and Shuffle compatible, it’s exclusive. And one last minor quibble: I haven’t been carrying these things around for very long, and the Klipsch logo—as you can see in the top image—is already flaking off of the otherwise well-styled and built earbuds. Far from a dealbreaker, but disconcerting, considering how new these things are. [Klipsch]

Excellent sound quality for the price, in both mic and earphones

Work with VoiceOver and Voice Control

Styling and build quality are nice, but the finish is delicate

Compatibility list is severely cropped by Apple’s special inline remote chip

The Price: $US100, cheap!

The Verdict: At age 27, I may be a successful gadget writer with a decent BS filter. But apparently, I still get suckered by the flashy promises of a new children’s toy. It’s in the DNA, I guess.

I went into this review with very low expectations. If the $US100 toy could produce an image of even nominal quality, I’d be gushing over it. Unfortunately, it’s just not capable enough to ever become fun.

Daytime viewing is simply not happening—not a complete surprise, given that brightness is the number one downfall of any projector. But the EyeClops’ LEDs can’t cut through even the slightest inklings of stray light…except at a throw distance of about a foot away when the screen is tiny.
At night, the screen may be brighter, but it’s still not something you’d want your kids watching. At a size of about 46 inches, it was impossible to find any sort of critical focus. And the picture below makes the image look a lot more contrasty than it actually was.
The surprise? The EyeClops speaker is loud and very clear. At max volume, you can hear the thing in the next room. So theoretically, the projector could replace a TV without the need for some extra speaker solution. Theoretically.

Products like the EyeClops Bionic Eye and Night Vision Goggles are both highly regarded tech toys for children—and both are quite a bit cheaper than this projector. Go with one of those choices and wait for mini projection technology in general to catch up.

Can operate on four D batteries with larger base…no lithium ion?

Poor quality in the daytime

Only slightly better quality at night

The Price: £44.99.

The Verdict: It’s one of the most adolescently satisfying gadgets I’ve tested in some time, but the audio quality is (expectantly) mediocre at best.

The K-Box charges its 20-hour battery via USB and plugs in to pretty much any audio player through a 3.5mm (headphone) jack. The spartan design lacks fancy switches or fancy equalizer displays. Once it’s plugged in, the speaker just automatically turns on.

While it feels like a chunky MP3 player of yore in one’s hand, the rear is sticky, similar to the gecko foot pad you find on the Palm Pre Touchstone. This “gel audio technology” transfers the bass frequencies to whatever the K-Box is stuck to, from windows to coffee tables.
Just holding the K-Box makes it sound like any treble-heavy micro speaker. But sticking it to glass (which I found to be the most acoustically receptive surface next to thin metal) completely alters the audio quality, highlighting the mids and bass line with a poor but probably better quality than you’ll find in competing speakers of this size and an impressive level of volume.
Really though, it’s that 10 minutes of euphoria as you run around the house sticking the K-Box to the shower stall, coffee table, dryer door, and cat that may make the K-Box a satisfying gadget purchase. A $US20 pair of headphones will offer a better listening experience, as will the average iPod dock. [K-Box]

Gimmicky fun

Simple, understated design

Works better than expected, but still pretty lousy

Often it’s not sticky enough to stick to some surfaces

The Price: $US40

The Verdict: It works. IT WORKS! Playing back 1080p trailers in Quicktime, powered by a MacBook Pro, on our plasma TV was fantastic. And the part where it actually has audio? Yes please.

It’s quite easy to use. The USB and Mini DisplayPort goes into the MacBook Pro (or Mac Mini), and the other end takes an HDMI cable. Your Mac should automatically detect the new display, but you have to manually switch the audio output to the USB audio device. If you’re planning on using a new Mac Mini, this is the way to go. The video quality is pretty much what you’d expect from a clean 1080p source, and those trailers look good.

And with the problems Apple’s own Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapters are having, using this and an HDMI-capable monitor might be a smart idea.

The adapters will be available later in the week. I suggest you pick one up if you have any kind of Mini DisplayPort-capable computer you want to throw up onto your TV once in a while. Also, Monoprice has a unit coming up soon as well that’s pretty similar. [Kanexlive]