Xeni & Rob

Rob Beschizza

Review: an afternoon with the Sony Ericsson W518a

In Brief: The W518a is a decent clamshell phone with uncommonly svelte design and a nice Facebook app. At $50 after a rebate, it's also priced right. But the Walkman features are trapped behind a proprietary headphone jack, and it doesn't shine in other respects.

Sony Ericsson's W518a is a clamshell phone offered by AT&T for $100 with a 2-year contract. A $50 mail-in rebate halves that price. It has a 3G radio, 320 x 240 display, GPS, a 3.2 megapixel camera, and external music controls for use as an MP3 player.

On the Walkman front, it can access Napster and other streaming services, has an FM radio, and can be controlled by shaking it just so: clever! The W518a also has a full set of basic info management apps, instant messaging, a sound recorder, and so on.

Its flagship feature, however, is a custom Facebook app that aims to make this decidedly dumb phone a lot faster and smarter when it comes to integration with the social networking site.

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Rob Beschizza

A weekend with Cakewalk's Sonar V-Studio 100

A digital music dilattente, I'm hardly qualified to evaluate the quality of Sonar's VS-100 compared to rival equipment. So I won't. Instead, I'll just tell you why I like this pricey $700 box, and look forward to the day I'm good enough at music to make it a worthwhile buy.

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Rob Beschizza

Review: A week with Dyson's DC22 Motorhead

Dyson's DC22's is a compact and powerful canister vac that looks like a cyberpunk chain gun. Though it's extremely good at its job, the $800 price tag highlights its few flaws and places it out of the price range of many shoppers.

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Rob Beschizza

Review: A day with HP's MediaSmart LX195

In Brief: HP's MediaSmart LX195 is a file-storing box that works great if you have Windows PCs and like the ease of Windows Home Server. It even syncs with web-based services like Flickr. But its focus is on the media-sharing basics: it doesn't have a second drive for redundant backups, it doesn't connect to your TV set, and it can't be properly administered from a Mac.

HP's LX195 has a 1.6 GHz processor, gigabit ethernet, 1GB of RAM, a 640GB hard drive and 4 USB ports. Running Microsoft Windows Home Server, it's competitively priced against consumer network storage options, but offers extras like iTunes media serving, network media collection and antivirus.

At $300 after rebates, it's the perfect thing if you're on Windows, have a family-full of computers bursting with photos and music, and want an easy, no-tinkering-required setup. Step out of this scenario, however, and some shortcomings emerge.

Pros and cons follow, in no particular order.

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Rob Beschizza

Review: GP2X Wiz runs retrogaming rings around mainstream rivals

In Brief: GamePark's GPX2 Wiz is the best portable yet for retrogamers, but the high price argues against upgrading if you already own something similar. Near-perfect Amiga gaming kicks ass. It sets a high bar for imminent rival Pandora.

GP2X Wiz, available from ThinkGeek, is a handheld gaming console about the size of a pack of slim cigarettes. It has a 533/800MHz processor, a 320x240 2.8" AMOLED touchscreen display, 1GB of internal storage and an SD card slot. A tailored cut of the Linux operating system boots in about 15 seconds.

The latest in a series of handheld gaming consoles made by Korea's GamePark, the GP2X Wiz differs sharply from mainstream competitors like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. Whereas those machines incorporate strenuous measures to stop people writing their own software, the Wiz is completely open: anyone can write new applications and software, either in the machine's native code or using Adobe Flash.

While the open architecture means that the GP2X Wiz is unlikely to see official ports of leading titles, GamePark says it plans to release new games at a regular clip. Its heart, however, is in being a perfect platform for playing homebrew games and emulated classics. At $180, however, the latest model is very expensive. Is it worth it?

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Rob Beschizza

Gallery: Fit PC 2 fits just about anywhere

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Rob Beschizza

The Kindle DX with 10 everyday things

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Rob Beschizza

Greenheart: Sony Ericsson's "environmentally friendly" cell phone

The C901 GreenHeart is a cellphone not visually dissimilar to Sony Ericsson's usual fare: a sleek candybar design, metal-silver, with the house's distinctive 1980s look. It differs in that the pitch centers around GreenHeart, an ad campaign that seeks to establish serious environmental credibility.

Part handset recycling program, part a promise to make its products "the greenest headsets on the market," GreenHeart means, in practice, that you don't get a physical manual, the case is made of 50 percent recycled material, and it uses a light sensor to manage display brightness. It ships with a similarly made headset, and the paints used are nontoxic.

The C901 is a GSM/EDGE/HSPA phone with a five megapixel camera, Xenon flash, instant web-uploads and picture blogging on shot, Bluetooth, Google Maps and geotagging. It has a 240x320 pixel display, 120MB of RAM, Memory Stick Micro support, and is 13mm thick.

Its sister model, Naite, has a two megapixel camera and less memory, but replaces the Memory Stick with MicroSD (!) and shall also come in "Ginger Red."

Giant photos after the jump.

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Rob Beschizza

NEC's massive 43" curved display soon on sale

The 2880x900 pixel resolution of NEC's CRV43 curved display is perfect for gaming, but at $8,000, it's not everyman territory. It has a 10,000:1 contrast ratio, 0.02ms response time, and is claimed to cover 100 percent of the sRGB color gamut. It hooks up with DVI-D and HDMI, and includes a USB 2 hub.

I saw this in person at CES a couple of times while it was in development: what you don't see in this product shot is that it's actually an oldschool rear-projection unit, with a nine inch rear.

After the jump, a gallery!

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Rob Beschizza

PSP Go Details

Sony's PSP Go cuts the original's obsolete UMD optical drive and compacts the design into a pocketable gadget that resembles the Mylo (And one other.)

According to the leaked details, it'll have a 3.8" display, 16GB of flash storage, a Memory Stick slot, and Bluetooth. It'll be "43 percent lighter" than the current PSP, support handset tethering, and integrate well with Sony's PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Network. New Gran Turismo, Little Big Planet and Metal Gear Solid titles will launch it.

Engadget rounds up the news on the clearly-improved refit. A gallery of press shots, published at Eurogamer, follows.

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Joel Johnson

Gallery: 23 photos of soldiers looking completely badass

Best Warrior

"A Soldier competing in the "Best Warrior" competition participates in a night-fire exercise at Fort Lee, Va., Oct. 2. Twenty-four of the Army's finest warriors representing 12 commands from across the Army gathered at Fort Lee, Va., from Sept. 29 to Oct. 3, 2008, to compete in the competition which named the Army's soldier and noncommissioned officer of the year."

Field Artillery

"Field artillerymen of Battery A, 2-218th Field Artillery, 41st Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Oregon Army National Guard, fire a 105mm shell from a Howitzer at Yakima Training Grounds, Wash., during the units annual training Aug. 9. Photo by Sgt. Chad Layton of Battery A, 2-218th Field Artillery, Oregon Army National Guard"

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Joel Johnson

Gallery: The Gear of War

iRobot SUGV

"A Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle rests on the stairs of the south parking lot catwalk to corridor three in the Pentagon, June 13. The SUGV is part of Future Combat Systems and was one of several pieces of FCS hardware on display at the Pentagon."

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Rob Beschizza