Filed under: Laptops, Storage

If you were wondering who’s responsible for the super-slim burner that allows Toshiba’s waifish Portege R500 sub-notebook to sport an optical drive in such a small enclosure — and who wasn’t, really? — it seems that Akihabara News has solved this non-mystery by outing Panasonic’s seven-millimeter thick DVD writer as the guilty party. At only 99 grams heavy as well, the unnamed spinner reportedly stomps all over the previous record holder for slimmest notebook drive, which measured a relatively-bloated 9.5 millimeters from top to bottom. You’ll probably be seeing this model all over the place soon enough; in fact, we wouldn’t be surprised (well, maybe we would) if Samsung stuffs one into the first revision of the Q1 Ultra. or Mr. Hawkins employs it to add some value to the critically-panned Foleo.

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

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

After teasing us for a couple of months, modder extraordinaire (and Engadget contributor) Ben Heckendorn has finally taken the wraps off his mystery commercial product, now revealed to be a gaming headset. Dubbed the Audio FX Pro 5+1, the USB (non-wireless) headset opts for an old school look but packs its share of newfangled features, including internal motors for some force feedback action, along with some virtual 5.1 surround sound. As a bonus, Ben Heck’s also responsible for the product’s packaging, which includes some copy you’re not likely to find anywhere else (“hear the cries of dying noobs with perfect digital clarity”), not to mention some faithfully reproduced bullet holes that Ben himself created in a fit of rage inspiration. As promised, the headset also comes in at under $100 ($80, specifically), and is available for pre-order from eDimensional now, although there’s no word yet on when it’ll ship.

[Via Joystiq]

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

Luxury car king brings us its first ever mobile phone.

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

If Philips’ portable audio division has one thing going for it, it’s definitely consistency. While other manufacturers are tacking value-added features onto their products like WiFi, higher storage capacities, and more codec support, Philips just keeps on releasing the same damn model in slightly different form factors. Cases in point are the company’s new SA9300 (pictured right) and SA5100 (pictured left) DAPs, which offer the same small color screens, FM tuners, limited file support, and maxed-out 4GB capacities that we’ve already seen a hundred times before on devices like the SA9200 and SA6045. GenerationMP3 spotted these units on Philips’ German site, meaning we’re not sure when/if the cookie cutter players will be hitting the States; pricing, however, seems to be in the €99 to €199 ($133 to $268) range, depending on model number and storage.

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

Filed under: Storage

We know that you’ve been barely able to sleep since the new miCARD memory card format was announced — who would be the first manufacturer to get these out the door, you wondered — so you can finally rest easy with the news that Pretec is showing off its own version of the multi-functional little wafers (pictured larger than actual size, of course) at Computex in Taipei. The company’s S-Diamond line already tops off at an impressive 8GB (with theoretical capacities of 2TB, but we’re not holding our breath), and like the flood of other miCARDs soon to hit the market, will work with regular SD/MMC-capable devices through the use of an adapter. Pretec still isn’t being forthcoming with any pricing or release info on these, but since there’s no miCARD-specific hardware on the market yet anyway, we doubt that many of you care.

[Via Everything USB]

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