We’ve been hearing all sorts of good things about the Palm Treo 755p, which is available on Verizon, Sprint and Alltel, so we thought we’d better check it out ourselves. Well this is what we found:
So PhoneArena aren’t overly impressed with the Treo and advise Sprint customers to check out the Centro. We must agree with PA on this, the Treo doesn’t look that great and there are better options out there offering the same features and functionality that will fit more comfortably in your, err, palm.
The latest DAP offering from SanDisk, the Sansa Fuze is getting some good reviews around the web, not great but good. It gets a thumbs up from the guys over at anythingbutipod and there’s a nice video to boot. Here’s the low-down on the Fuze
* 3 capacity options, 2, 4 and 8 GB
* 1.9 inch display
* handles mp3, wma, secure wma and wav audio files
* handles mpeg-4 vid
* FM tuner
* microSD slot
* Audio battery life of 24 hours
* Video battery life of 5 hours
* talks nicely with Windows, OS and Linux
The price tag rocks in at US$80 for the 2 GB, jumping up to US$100 for 4 GBs and US$130 for the 8 GB version. The specs are not amazing but coupled with the price tags the Fuze doesn’t look too shabby.
LaCie have obviously been quite busy as they have just launched a whole raft of external hard drives for both desktops and laptops. The desktop range, cunningly entitled LaCie Desktop Hard Drive, comes in three sizes, 320 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB with the 1 TB big boy having a larger form factor too. The laptop range, called LaCie Mobile Disk, comes in a variety of sizes from 80 GB up to 320 GB. Here are a few more details on the new drives
Desktop Hard Drive
* Hi speed USB 2.0 interface
* 7,200 rpm
* 8 MB cache (16 MB on the 1TB version)
* 480 Mbps transfer rate
* 41 x 113 x 194 mm (115 x 65 x 208 mm for the 1TB version)
* 900g (1800g for the big boy)
* Plays nicely with W2K upwards and Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
Mobile Disk
* USB mini connectivity
* 5,400 rpm
* 8 MB cache
* 480 Mbps transfer rate
* 81 x 128 x 15 mm
* 170g
* Plays nicely with W2K upwards and Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
There’s no official price tags for these suckers on the LaCie website at the moment, but rumour has it that they’ll start at US$125 and go from there. So as long as rumour is right and the price tags are reasonable these drives may be a worthwhile investment and they certainly look the part.
Having just recently announced a price of 400 Euros (US$600) for the Eee PC 900 in Europe, Asus will launch this cute little sucker for a mere US$500 in the good old US of A. This price tag seems to be attached to a Linux version of the laptop which sports slightly lower specs than a hinted at Windows XP version which comes with a bit more (required) grunt and thus a heftier price tag. Here are the specs for the Linux version
* 512 MB of RAM
* 12 GB of flash storage
* Intel’s 1.6 GHz Atom
* 9 inch display 1024 x 600
* 2.5 hour battery life
* 3 USB, 1 monitor, headphone jack, microphone input, SD card reader
* Ethernet 10/100
* 802.11b/g wireless
The Asus Eee PC 900 certainly looks like a winner if you’re after a slimmed down laptop in both specs and physical size. I’m not personally convinced by it but I’m sure there’s a niche market out there for these suckers. If anyone has had a play with one, drop me a line and let us all know what you think.
When discussing ergonomic workstations, laptops tend not to crop up in the conversation. However that may change with the Dreamcom 10 laptop which was shown off at CeBit recently. This nifty laptop has a 15cm vertically adjustable display to stop those neck cramps and comes with a docking station to allow you to use the laptop ‘at a distance’. The DreamCom 10 comes in three flavours, Personal, Business and Professional. Features on the Business flavour include
* 2.2 GHz T7500 cpu
* 2 GB of DDR2 memory
* 2 USB ports
* ExpressCard slot
* 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600
* Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity
* 160 GB hard drive
* 15.4 inch display
The Professional version ramps the cpu up to 2.6 GHz T7800 and 4 GB of DDR2 memory. So at last a laptop designed with ergonomics in mind, however the cost of this extra functionality is still unknown as these suckers come with no price tag.
This week Nokia announced its latest addition to the multi-media mobile phone world, the 6124 classic. The 6124 will only be available through Vodafone when it hits the streets in the 2Q. Here’s the Global Director Terminals, Jens Schulte-Bockum enthusing over the unit
“We are proud to offer the new Nokia 6124 classic which will allow our customers to access the complete suite of Vodafone communications, browsing, content and Internet services. In addition, the exclusive Nokia 6124 classic offers customers further improvement in their experience with many of Vodafone’s services already launched with leading Internet partners.”
Yeah, OK, what are the details on this sucker, I hear you asking.
* 3G broadband connectivity
* Use as a modem for your PC
* 2 inch display
* Up to 8GB of expandable memory
* 2MP camera with flash and panorama option
* Uses S60 and Symbian OS
Nothing spectacular really but I think the price tag may make us perk up over this sucker. Obviously we are just guessing on what that would be but I would imagine that both Nokia and Vodafone would want it priced competitively. Look for the 6124 classic to become, errr, dare I say a classic!
Judging by the amount of interest in our original Verizon Coupe post, it seems a lot of you are quite keen on this phone. So we thought we’d track down a video review of the Coupe to show it in all its $20 glory.
The reviewer, Phone Scoop, aren’t overly impressed with the it but we sort of think what do you expect for US$20. They do make a good point about the ICE buttons being too close to a couple of other buttons which bizarrely are duplicated elsewhere, but otherwise it’s a great little phone for some one who doesn’t want a user guide the size of War and Peace but wants the security of knowing they can quickly contact friends or family in case of emergency. And did we mention it’s only US$20 too?
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