Filed under: Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video

These days, the cool kids are looking to do more than just play back the freshest jams on their portable media player. We’re talking video, PVR, WiFi, the works. Have a listen at Marco’s question, and if you think you could do one better, send in your inquiry to ask at engadget dawt com:

“I’m looking for a new PMP, but I want a unit that can do it all. A large screen, big hard drive, support for lots of codecs, PVR functionality, TV output, etc. I’d also like Bluetooth and / or WiFi if possible. I don’t mind units that are somewhat bulky, but I want one with a great user interface and decent battery life. Any help here?”

Yeah, he totally just called the Archos / Cowon fanboys from the woodwork, but seriously, what would you recommend to this fellow? Is your current PMP a dream come true? Would you advise against getting whatever you’ve got? Spill your soul in comments below.

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Filed under: Transportation

Ah, ha! So, that Chinese S.W.A.T. team we caught ridin’ dirty on Segways earlier this week actually had a reason to be carrying on like they were — they were performing anti-terrorist drills in preparation for security during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Comically enough, the drill was said to be one of “rapid deployment,” though we aren’t told how many spills were taken when officers tried to actually maneuver one of these things around, aim at a target, pull a brown bag down around their head and keep it from spontaneously reversing. Just one question guys: what’s with the tiny guns?

[Via CNET]

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Filed under: Robots

Building a big robot is nothing to congratulate yourself on, but doing it in this manner is certainly worthy of a little self-indulgence. The creature you see standing before you is a 22-foot tall Styrobot constructed entirely from spare polystyrene packing materials, and no, each piece didn’t just show up that way. Michael Salter managed to whittle away on this beast until its completion, and now we’re hearing that it’ll be going on a short demonstration tour before being “decommissioned.” We say throw a brain in there and see what happens when you cut it loose.

[Via TechDigest]

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Filed under: Household

While the rest of the world goes off to win the hearts of environmentalists (and laypeople, too) with LED light bulbs, Hitachi Lighting and Seiyu are taking the road (way) less traveled. Reportedly, the duo has collaborated in order to pop out a “bulb-shaped fluorescent lamp that can be separated into a lighting circuit unit and an arc tube unit.” What this means is that the lighting circuit can be used repeatedly (up to 30,000 hours) while the arc tube simply gets replaced every 10,000 hours. The pair is hoping that the bulbs will take the place of traditional 60-watt incandescents, and considering that these only draw around 13-watts each, it’s fairly easy to see how Mother Earth would just love you for making the switch. As for pricing, we’re hearing that these will sell for around ¥1,500 ($14) apiece when they launch this October in Japan, so don’t plan on recouping your investment in energy savings right away or anything.

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Filed under: Cellphones

So we heard from a very reliable source that mobile user interface guru Matias Duarte — who you may know as the man behind the Sidekick and Helio UI / user experiences — actually left Helio late last year to join up with Palm. Although no announcement was made, we hear he and his gang of designers jumped ship (well before Helio completely flooded) to take on the monumental task of designing the UI for Palm’s next-gen mobile OS (aka “Palm OS 2.0 or II“). His resume online now lists him as “Senior Director, Human Interface and User Experience” doing “Something new…” since September 2007; we got in touch with Palm, who confirmed that he’s now under the company’s employ.

Of course, expectations should be pretty high — Palm’s only been promising this supposedly game-changing OS since around 2004, and the company’s reputation and pedigree is (or at least it used to be) in groundbreaking mobile UI design. But this news also kind of makes us wonder: if they didn’t have a killer UI and user experience team already in place and long-since working their asses off by late 2007, exactly how far along are they on this thing, anyway?

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Filed under: Laptops

HP has already busted out a bundle of Puma-based laptops and tablets, but it looks like it’s not done with AMD’s latest platform just yet, with it now rolling out a pair of new Compaq laptops aimed at business users. Those include the 15.4-inch Compaq 6735b and the 14.1-inch 6535b, each of which will come loaded with your choice of AMD Turion X2, X2 Ultra, or Athlon X2 processors, along with ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics, support for up to 8GB of RAM (though only 2GB and 3GB options are configurable from HP), a max 160GB hard drive, and an optional second hard drive in place of the DVD burner if you so choose. You can also expect a WXGA resolution on each, with WSXGA+ also availabe on the 15.4-inch model and WXGA+ an option on the 14.1-inch (both have both BrightView and anti-glare options, as well). From the looks of it, you can get your hands on either one right now, with the base configuration for each setting you back $779.

[Via Laptoping]

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Filed under: Laptops

Given that Gateway just pushed out a round of updates including the relatively ginormous P Series, we reckon it was only logical to expect a review shortly. To be frank, the P-6831FX critiqued over at HotHardware is far from being the most potent machine with a 17-inch panel, but unlike many of its luxurious competitors, this one is actually affordable. So, how much gaming joy can $1,349.99 bring you? Quite a bit when the 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS and 3GB of RAM are included. Reviewers found gaming performance to be downright remarkable, though the 1.67GHz CPU did hamper it a bit in other areas. It should be noted that the unit now arrives with a slightly faster CPU among other minor extras, so if it was good then, we’re guessing it’s a runaway winner now.

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