Filed under: Desktops, Peripherals

Just months after Philips went nuts and introduced a plethora of new input peripherals, Kensington is pulling a similar move by launching its colorful Ci Lifestyle Collection of wireless mice and keyboards. Each device was designed to be as thin as comfortably possible, sport advanced power saving abilities, and easily fit into the road warrior’s bag of choice. Kicking things off is the $34.99 Ci70 wireless mouse, which comes in around 35-percent slimmer than common competitors and touts an automatic sleep mode to save those batteries. The $39.99 Ci70LE simply adds a dash of colorful (and bubbly) design, while the $34.99 Ci75m gets even smaller for the mobile crowd. The $39.99 Ci85m sports a QuickStart feature that powers the mouse up as soon as the PC turns on, and opts for an ExpressCard receiver instead of the USB dongle that its less expensive siblings rely on. For those looking for a keyboard / mouse combination, the Ci70 Wireless Desktop Set throws a Ci70 and a low-profile keyboard together in a convenient $79.99 package, and those who’ve already warmed to the cutesy allure will be delighted to know that all of the aforementioned devices are currently available for pre-ordering.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

For those looking to make the leap to home automation whilst making sure that elegance is taken into account, Control4 is hoping its newfangled Home Controller HC-300 will fit the bill. The relatively low-cost IP-based home controller offers up a multitude of serial, infrared, and video sensing ports, plays nice with standards-based communication technology including Ethernet, WiFi, and ZigBee mesh networking, and can dictate multi-room music, smart lighting, advanced temperature control, and security without breaking a sweat. Most notably, however, is its ability to output the graphical user interface in sparkling 720p, meaning that you will no longer be ashamed of flashing your home controller’s GUI on the big screen. Additionally, Control4 revamped the device by adding an anodized black aluminum chassis and a glossy black faceplate, and it plans on shipping these things out sometime in July for a respectable $699.

[Via CEPro]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Displays, GPS, Transportation

Despite cries of privacy invasion from the city’s many drivers, interactive entertainment / advertising / navigation platforms are still being rolled out in New York’s 13,000+ cabs, with major player TaxiTech’s eTaxi solution the latest to receive approval from the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission. One of four companies certified by the TLC to fill a mandate requiring these rigs in all cabs by October, TaxiTech has teamed up with hardware partners Apriva, Ingenico, and Grey Island Systems to offer a very polished looking setup centered around a 15-inch touchscreen capable of delivering a whole slew of valuable infoswag. (Click here to check out a video of the eTaxi interface). Like Digital Dispatch’s SmartCab system before it, eTaxi gives passengers the ability to track their route in real time (no more pricey “shortcuts” for unsuspecting tourists), kick back to some ad-supported video or music content, bone up on historical info about the city, and even pay their fare with a credit card, tacking on a pre-calculated tip with the push of a finger. Sounds pretty convenient to us; let’s just hope we don’t have to start eating part of the multi-thousand dollar per car annual fee it’s costing cab companies to install these luxuries.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Laptops

Much as they did back at the time of Vista’s launch, Sony decided to refresh a bunch of its laptops in one fell swoop, today announcing no less than 21 new VAIOs in four different model ranges. Those include the VAIO A, BX, FZ and G series, which each get upgrades of varying degrees. The top end of the lot are the VAIO A series laptops, which pack 17-inch displays (1920×1200 on the higher end model), T7100 or T7300 Core 2 Duo processors, up to 2GB of RAM, two 120GB hard drives, an optional Blu-ray drive, and NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics. Taking things down a notch, the FZ series laptops each boast 15.4-inch displays, along with Core 2 Duo processors and slightly smaller hard drives, while the VAIO BX models will give you a choice of 14.1 or 15.4-inch displays, Core 2 Duo processors, up to 2GB of RAM, and a max 120GB hard drive. Rounding out the line-up is the VAIO G, which is lightweight in more ways than one, boasting a 12.1-inch display, a Core Solo U1400 processor, 1GB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive. Look for all them to roll out in Japan over the course of July, with them starting at just ¥109,800 ($900) and going all the way up to ¥400,000 ($3,285).

[Via Impress and Akihabara News]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Yesterday when Steve showed us 10 of his favorite new Leopard features, he left out at least a couple we were a little more than interested in: HD DVD and Blu-ray support. While Tiger does have support for HD DVD and Blu-ray drives, it’s not able to play back Hollywood movies from either format. Someone at MacRumors has discovered that the new DVD Movie Player.app in Leopard now includes preferences for both HD DVD and Blu-ray. Sure, Tiger included a preference pane for “HD”, but this was for discs with H.264 encoded HD video created in Apple’s DVD Studio Pro — or the like. Of course, this isn’t the only thing needed to add next-gen Hollywood movies to Leopard, but we’re hoping Apple can pile on the rest before October, like AACS, HDCP, VC1 and of course an actual drive shipped with a new Mac.

[Via AVSForum]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!