Electronic Toy World

Posted Jan 27th 2008 9:48AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Laptops
You’d think there’d be a bit more excitement associated with the inclusion of Intel’s latest and greatest, but HP decided to take the quiet route with integrating Penryn into its Pavilion laptop lineup. The Pavilion dv2700t, dv6700t and dv9700t are all getting an Intel T9300 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo option, with a 6MB l2 cache and a purported 10% speed boost over last-gen Intel processors. Unfortunately, that mild speed boost comes at a $100 premium over the T7500, so you money might be better spent on RAM or a better graphics card — or you could just choose it all, the Engadget-approved method of speccing a laptop.

[Via NotebookReview]

Posted Jan 27th 2008 6:42AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable VideoIf you’ve got a certain brand loyalty to the official iPhone Dev Team then take note, they just released their own special flavor of the 1.1.3 jailbreak for iPhone / iPod touch. We guess that with the splitter version already outed (and it’s secrets revealed to Apple) there was no sense in keeping it under wraps any longer. The hack requires a v1.1.2 jailbroken device with the BSD Subsystem v1.5 or greater installed — it does NOT upgrade your baseband. All the usual cautions apply hacker-boy so be careful out there, we haven’t tested… yet.

[Thanks, Ben]

Download — official 1.1.3 Dev Team jailbreak

I just love the clean, minimal design of this white-on-white LED clock from Japan. The simple dot-matrix display is powered by bright white LEDs layered beneath a clear and white acrylic shell.

The clock offers alarm capability, and can be automatically set via a radio signal (although it’s possible this feature only works in Japan). Measuring in at about 4-inches wide and 2-inches deep, It’s just the right size for a desktop or bedside table.

Alas, this is yet another one of those wonderful items which appears to only be available in Japan. If you’re willing to do a little translation, you might be able to coax the guys at Visions Coax into shipping you one. Retail price for the clock is ¥7875 (appx. $73 USD).

[BTW, these look a heck of a lot like these dot-matrix LED clocks I featured a while back. Only those ones came blue or green dot patterns - but I now prefer the white one.]

read more about:

acrylic, alarm, clock, dot matrix, japan, led, round, white

Welcome to Tokyoflash’s latest style in watches… the Tibida.

Tibida expresses three functions through its name; time, binary and date. Created using 42 white LEDs, this design offers three conceptually different ways to tell the time; hour-centric, minute-centric and binary.

Combining a stainless steel case and clasp with a mineral crystal lens and polyurethane band, Tibida is available in four styles; polished stainless steel case with either a red, blue or black face or IP black case with an orange face.

Tibida is only available to buy from www.tokyoflash.com and until February 5th 2008, they are offering a special launch price of just 12,900 Japanese Yen ($122, €82, £62) including free 5-day worldwide shipping.

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $122

Back in the early 1980s, long before the Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 dominated the “next-gen” video game market, a little known console lived on the cutting-edge of gaming technology. The RDI Halcyon was a LaserDisc-based gaming system which was designed to bring the first full-motion video gaming experience to your living room. Now one of these rare gaming systems has found its way onto eBay.

RDI was the manufacturer behind such LaserDisc arcade classics as Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace, and the Halcyon was their attempt to bring the same type of gaming experience to your living room. In addition to its FMV game play, the Halcyon had speech synthesis and early voice recognition capabilities. It also was one of the first systems which let you save your gaming progress.

The one that’s up for sale on eBay comes with everything but the original microphone that came with the system, and even includes the only discs ever released for the console: Thayer’s Quest and NFL Raiders vs. Chargers. This is an extremely rare find, so I’d expect the price to shoot through the roof. Here’s the kind of exciting gaming action you’ll be missing out on if you don’t win the auction:

click to view this video clip

[Video from the arcade version of Thayer’s Quest, but you get the point].

With only two games ever released and originally priced at a whopping $2500 (in 1985 dollars), it’s no wonder the system never really caught on.

[eBay via GameSniped]

read more about:

1980s, arcade, classic, console, laserdisc, rdi, speech, video, voice

Alltel has added a few new handsets that should meet the needs or desire for most. First up we have the BlackBerry Pearl 8130, which was previously available in amethyst now in a hotter red. Can we say good timing for Vaentine’s Day? Aside from the color change the specs remain the same. Next up is the LG Scoop, perfect for those who love text messaging it offers the slide-out QWERTY keyboard along with a 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth and Alltel’s Axcess Voice2TXT. The Scoop will be available in your choice of orange, blue or black. Finally we have the least exciting of the bunch, the Samsung Muse. The Muse is a flip-style phone that features a 2-megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, Axcess Mobile Guide with GPS capabilities, and an MP3 player with a dedicated music key.

The red 8130 is currently available for pre-order, the LG Scoop and Samsung Muse are still not available for orders, but we would expect that to change shortly.

Product [Alltel]

Lately is seems like every hot smartphone is going pink, just recently we saw the Centro change color, now Verizon becomes the latest with their pink Blackberry Pearl 8130. This one however does not come as much of a surprise, we all knew it was coming, but now its officially available. If the pink Pearl is for you go ahead and grab yours for $149.99, along with a 2-year agreement.

Read [Verizon]

Cowon has recently made some great PMP’s, however, the pricing was always a little bit on the high side so it was good of Cowon to drop some of their prices. They cut down prices on the Q5W, A3, and the iAudio 7.

Beginning with the Q5W, they cut off $40 from the original price and it even comes with a free GPS cradle with a purchase, which is normally $199. The 16GB iAudio 7 went down to $209, which is about $90 lower than the original price. Finally, they took off about $20 from the 30GB A3. You can check out all these new prices at their JetMall website. This seems to be a great move by Cowon and is sure to boost their sales of their PMP’s especially the Q5W.

Read [JetMall] Via [Crave]

Posted Jan 26th 2008 9:03PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Cellphones
Sure, we’ve seen cellphone encryption contraptions before, but KoolSpan’s aiming to make things extra easy for green CIA agents. Set to be released next month, the microSD TrustChip slips right into a-many of smartphones and enables callers to hit up other undercover gurus and chat with 256-bit AES encryption, providing that the receiver of the call has a TrustChip jammed in his / her phone as well. Furthermore, the device itself touts enough features to make Maxwell Smart all sorts of envious: on-chip crypto processing, key management and a tamper-resistant environment for starters. Word on the street pegs this bad boy at $300, but we all know the cost of getting a call sniffed could be much more costly than that.

[Via GetFlashMemory]

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New Era has some rather pricey game inspired caps on the market.  The caps, which feature boldly colored Pacman and Space Invaders motifs might not give you street cred, but they ooze geek cred.  All but the most hardcore geeks will probably avoid these, but if any of you out there are looking for a game hat that you can wear in the privacy of your own home, this is it.

The price, unfortunately is $55 per hat, which is what most people would pay for semi-stylish head wear and as much as a new game.

New Era Pacman & Space Invaders Caps, ALBOTAS, Oh Gizmo!