Not much info on this sucker, but it does look sexy and it does have a go faster stripe. The latest 42 inch LCD TV offering from Benq, the SH4241, features 1920×1080 res for your HD 1080p players and is bound to have all the bells and whistles you’ve come to expect from Benq.

Unfortunately other than that info, there’s not much else we can glean from the Benq press release. We let you have more details when Benq decide to part with them.

Source: engadget

I must admit I’m not overly impressed with the look of the new 250GB portable hard drive from LaCie. What’s even more surprising is that it’s designed by Porsche but then I’m not a lover of their cars either. But the drive’s stats do stand up nicely and I’m a sucker for numbers!

It can transfer data at 480 Mb/s over its USB 2.0 connection or at 400 Mb/s across the FireWire interface, spins round at 5,400 and is a slimline 17 x 76 x 129 mm. But the winner for me is the 6.35 ounces that this baby weighs - nice! The drive is already pre-formatted for both Macs and PCs, so plug it in and away you go! Unfortunately it’s priced at US$270 which is a lot more than similar spec’ed externals like the Fujitsu but then it is a Porsche hard drive :)

Source: Pocket-Lint

You may remember my confusion a few days ago over whether the TEAC MP-600 media player had touch screen functionality or not. French language site BestofMicro had mentioned it in their write-up of the MP-600, yet no mention of it was made on the TEAC website.

Anyway, I decided to get the word from the horses mouth, well at least TEAC’s. The long and short of it is that you may touch the screen but it’ll do bu**er all. So that sort of makes the MP-600 more of a run of the mill media player that’s a bit short on memory rather than a snazzy touchy feely one. How sad.

In a desparate bid to hang on to customers, AOL, the internet division of Time Warner Inc., have been offering as much as US$3000 to staff who retained a customer attempting to cancel their AOL services.

The mass customer exodus started after AOL were forced to offer previously paid services for free once other companies such as Google and Yahoo started to offer similar services for nothing. If customers wished to cancel their paid for AOL services then they had to contact the company via fax, mail or phone. AOL only started to provide an online cancellation service as of August last year. Tactics used by the customer service reps included endlessly transferring the call until the customer gave up, aggressive attitudes towards cancelling customers and repeatedly putting customers on hold.

AOL have averted a 48 state lawsuit over these tactics by forking out $3 million and promising to change their ways. Also if you were a customer who was still charged by AOL after attempting to close their account, you can request a refund from AOL - of course you have to prove that you attempted to close your account whilst you were still paying for their services, not easy to do for phone cancellations unless you record your phone calls ;)

One thing that strikes me is that the math doesn’t really add up. $3000 to retain a customer who at most is paying $26 a month? The customer would have to stay with AOL for almost ten years for them to re-coup the pay out. Insane or what? I know the math isn’t that straightforward but even so this highlights the shoddy mis-management at AOL in not providing free services to exisiting customers whilst giving them away to new. Very sad.

Any AOL customers out there wish to share their ‘cancellation’ experience?

Source: Yahoo

Now we’re talking, this is about the most useful thing I’ve seen the iPhone do since its release. Nate True over at cre.ations.net has modified the open source software VNC so that all the Apple fans out there can access their Windows desktop via their snazzy new iPhone.

From his write-up of the VNC mod it sounds as if you are presented with a list of open windows on your desktop and by selecting one of them it is displayed on your iPhone. It also seems to use a funky text box input system for keyboard input as your desktop is viewed as a series of jpeg images and therefore no direct input is possible.

I do wonder how secure your VNC password would be, especially as you’d probably be using your iPhone to do this over someone else’s Wi-Fi network. But the theory is good and it sounds as if Nate has done a great job with this mod for VNC judging by comments on other blogs. Well done mate.

Source: The Boy Genius

I’m all for combining your gadgets, so I was thrilled to see that Toshiba’s latest LCD TV offering the Regza H3300 has an integrated 300GB hard drive. If 300GB is not quite enough recording space for you, then there are external SATA ports to connect up your TB drives as well. The H3300 comes in two sizes, 46 and 52 inch, and both boast 1080p resolution with 120Hz refresh.

Both versions have dual HDMI inputs as well as a DVI port along with a VGA connector for the analog amongst us. These puppies will be available in Japan on the 20th of this month and are priced at $4,276 for the 46 inch and $5,099 for the 52.

There’s no news yet as to when they’ll be available in North America or the rest of the world for that matter, but I’ll certainly be checking them out when they arrive at my local Toshiba dealer.

Source: Electronista

Apparently TEAC have jumped on the touchscreen functionality bandwagon with their MP-600 media player. Its top capacity is a bit on the small side at 4GB but is it slim or what? Measuring a mere 9mm thick this little sucker will almost comfortably slip into your back pocket.

Check out the specs

* USB 2.0 Interface
* Supports mp3, wma, avi, jpg
* 3.5 inch LCD display
* CD/MMC slots
* FM radio and recorder (wav)
* A super slim 73×43x9 mm
* Weight 43g

Sounds good eh? Well the confusing thing is (well confusing for me at least) is that the specs on the TEAC website make no mention of the touch screen functionality. Yet many tech blogs are raving about it and all have sourced their info from this page on the French language website BestofMicro. BestofMicro mention the player’s ‘ecran tactile’ which means ‘touch screen’. Certainly there are icons on the display that would imply touch screen functionality such as a pause icon, yet it seems strange not to mention it in the marketing spiel. So what’s the story? Can I touch it or not?

If anyone out there has one of these slimline mini entertainment centers let us all know the true story.