Its Electronica

Remember those swimming pools that seem to flow right over the edge? Well, the Hanging Printer Concept takes the same route, where most of its components are located right below the desk while the only parts sitting on the desk are the paper feed and print head. The case comes with an integrated LCD display to indicate status so that you know what’s going on with the printer. I wonder whether future printers from Canon and HP will come in such a design?

Computer Choppers, famous for adorning everyday electronics with exquisite materials have set their eyes on the 24″ iMac this time. They will soon make available more than 12 different plating options and a fair number of finishes for these 24″ iMacs. To have a taste of what you can expect, these options and finishes include white gold, platinum, and even Rose gold for those who are looking for a rather expensive Valentine’s Day present. Should you want to lighten your pockets a little bit more, you can always throw in diamonds and engrave a love message for all eternity. The turnaround time of 2 weeks make it rather tough to get your choice ready for February 14th though…

Drinks Fountain
To avoid hearing groans of disapproval at any party you throw, we recommend the Drinks Fountain. It creates a stunning waterfall effect to delight guests and fill glasses.

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Posted Feb 4th 2008 1:13AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Laptops

You must doing something right to capture the attention of third party accessory makers. Meet Brando’s $18 Car and $23 Travel Chargers for the Eee PC. Of course, ASUS already sells an official travel charger so really, only the Car Charger is likely to garner any interest. Still, ot does makes us wonder if a “Made for Eee” logo and licensing tithes are just around the corner?

Read — Car Charger
Read — Travel Charger

Posted Feb 4th 2008 12:34AM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Gaming, Laptops

We think it’s possible that the time has come to admit that Ben Heck (aka Benjamin Heckendorn) has officially taken it to the limit, put the pedal to the metal, and a large number of other cliches that suggest something has been pushed just about as far as you can take it. That’s right folks — it’s the Xbox 360 Elite laptop. We’re not even going to try and pretend to understand how an individual could go about creating this kind of extreme mod to the Microsoft console — needless to say that if there was one man who could do it, Ben is that guy. Luckily for us lay-people, he’s included a graphic breakdown of just about every step on the road to a portable Xbox 360, replete will all the case cracking, innards opening, wire splaying photos you could possibly want or need. Sorry NEStari and Atari 800 laptop — there’s a new boss in town.

Motorola are looking to separate their mobile phone division from the rest of the company in what some are seeing as the prelude to offloading the division altogether. According to the company’s press release, Motorola are “…exploring the structural and strategic realignment of its businesses to better equip its Mobile Devices business to recapture global market leadership and to enhance shareholder value. The company’s alternatives may include the separation of Mobile Devices from its other businesses in order to permit each business to grow and better serve its customers.”

Obviously this doesn’t mean the Mobile Devices division is for sale yet, but by separating it from the rest of the company, it makes selling it a whole lot easier.

To be honest, this really comes as no surprise. Rumours have been flying around for the past few months about various companies looking to take the ailing Mobile Devices division off Motorola’s hands, with Dell being the latest alleged bidder.

Since the heady days of the RAZR, Motorola’s phones have struggled to compete in the ferocious mobile phones market. Last year, the company was overtaken by Samsung, slipping from second to third place in the rankings of mobile phone companies. Worse, they lost close to $1 billion, which is clearly unsustainable. The company has to do something to redress these losses, and fast.

Unfortunately, its latest line-up of phones isn’t going to do the job, as they’re still languishing behind the leaders, while the latest rumours of phones that are set for release later in 2008 suggest devices that are only on a par with other phones that were released late last year - in other words, by the time they come to market, they’ll still be a year behind.

Motorola is therefore left playing serious catch-up, and has no choice but to refocus. By splitting the division off, it gives itself the option either successfully catching up, or selling the unit on if it continues to underperform. Personally, I think it’ll be sold, as it’s clear by now that Motorola phones just can’t compete with Nokia and Samsung.

[Source: UnwiredView, Motorola]

I suppose it is a very sad day should the above actually happen - it would somewhat be akin to McDonald’s selling off their burger business just to concentrate on desserts like ice cream and apple pie. This could end up to be true though, considering how Motorola’s stock has plummeted with a rapidly declining market share. I suppose that’s what happens when you come up with a killer design like the RAZR, but remain uninspired throughout subsequent models. That kinda sucks as more competition would always be good for the consumers.

Posted Feb 3rd 2008 9:48PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Cellphones, Displays

It seemed obvious back in mid-December of last year that Polymer Vision wasn’t going to nail its timetable for production versions of the 3G-equipped, e-ink wonder known as the Readius. Now word is that the company will have a commercial version of the phone / e-book reader available sometime in mid-2008 in Italy via Telecom Italia — provided that everything goes according to its diabolical plans. If you’ll recall, the device features a foldable, grayscale, 5-inch QVGA display, and boasts a slew of features, including HSDPA, a 400MHz ARM CPU, and a battery life up to “six times longer” than current mobile phones. We’ll admit we’re intrigued, but don’t make us wait too long over here, okay?

Posted Feb 3rd 2008 4:26PM by Ryan Block
Filed under: Gaming

PSP hackers will probably be pleased to learn that the next step has supposedly been taken by homebrew hacker Dark_AleX, who claims (with video!) to have the original and most hackable PSP firmware ever, v1.50, running on the new PSP slim hardware. The YouTube clip is posted after the break; take it as you will, but c’mon, it’s an eventuality.

Posted Feb 3rd 2008 5:58PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Laptops

We’re not sure that you’d want to do it, but it’s nice to know that you can do it. If you’re really sick of the native OS that came with your Eee — or you’re trying to feel out what a Cloudbook would be like if you could buy one — you can now install Everex’s Google-centric gOS onto your system with little-to-no effort, simply by following this ten point breakdown. You’ll need an external optical drive, a wired internet connection, and probably an hour or so, but once all is said and done, you can break free of Xandros and roll deep with the Ubuntu-based gOS. How the software performs on the miniscule laptop we couldn’t say, but at least now you can show your friends how truly unique you are.

[Thanks, Tom]