Your Gadget Guide

BigDog is probably our favorite DARPA-sponsored quadrupedal robot, capable of prancing across the terrain for 24 hours straight while carrying 400 pounds of equipment on its back. Don’t let that light-footed trot fool you, though — this thing’s a killer. Need proof? Check out this video courtesy of Boston Dynamics, who affixed a pair of rather pronounced bull horns onto the thing’s front and sent it charging at what looks like an unfortunate audio engineer. Thanks to a flourish of red he escaped unscathed. Olé!

[Via Gizmodo]

Continue reading Video: BigDog turned into BigBull (with BigHorns)

Filed under: Robots

Video: BigDog turned into BigBull (with BigHorns) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 08:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While some early shots showed a lot of promise, a full review was necessary to ensure that FujiFilm’s latest compact camera would be the performer we were hoping for — and that it would live up to its $400 price. According to Photography Blog this 12 megapixel shooter doesn’t disappoint, scoring very high marks for image quality and features. Its EXR mode, which can toggle between favoring resolution, dynamic range, or low noise, works more or less as advertised, bringing far more depth to shadows than your usual pocket cam can manage. Pictures were clear through ISO 800, but anything above that (up to its ludicrous ISO 12800 mode) were too noisy to be usable. Overall the came was found to be a “veritable breath of fresh air” and a solid choice for a serious photographers who like air and don’t want to lug their SLR everywhere.

Filed under: Digital Cameras

FijuFilm’s FinePix F200EXR, and its pricetag, get reviewed originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 08:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For better or worse, Circuit City has gone to that great big box in the sky, and, while we hate to see competition disappear in the retail world, we have a pretty good idea of which shop we might like to see go next. Office Depot has been the victim of various allegations lately, and Laptop Magazine has managed to get confirmation from numerous sales associates that those allegations about its staff are true, including lying about stock to prevent customers from buying machines without paying extra for extended warranties, and using Photoshop to raise laptop price tags by $100 so that those extended warranties are unavoidable. These and other shady dealings don’t seem to be exactly supported by the company, as Office Depot issued an internal memo telling its sales force to cut it out, but with confirmations from around the country it sounds like this was standard operating procedure. Discouraging, really — if we were looking for that kind of dishonesty we’d just buy all our gear on eBay.

[Via Switched]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Is Office Depot taking care of business by screwing over customers? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Other Mac-cloners may know their time is limited, but good ‘ol Psystar just keeps on forging straight ahead — despite being locked in a nasty legal battle with Apple that could result in it getting shut down any moment now. Ignoring that (sophisticated looking) elephant in the corner for a moment, the company has released its latest model, called the Open(3). It sports your choice of processors ranging from a 2.8GHz Core2Duo E7400 up to a 2.53GHz Core2Quad Q8200, up to 4GB of memory, 1TB of storage, a 6x Blu-ray burner, and graphics from an NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT, all packaged in a slim case that, while not quite up to Cupertino standards, certainly looks a fair bit more visually appealing than its previous black boxes. Prices start at just $599, but tick all those option buttons and you’ll be looking at something closer to $2,000 — a lot, but close to $1,000 less than a comparably spec’d Mac Pro. Get ‘em while you can.

[Via Pocket-lint]

Filed under: Desktops

Psystar pushes its luck, launches new Open (3) Mac clone desktop originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 06:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, there are endless desktop configurations out there and oodles of good deals, but we’re still smitten with this particular setup from iBUYPOWER: the Gamer Power 906. Putting that name to good use, they’ve managed to toss together an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 processor, NVIDIA 9600GT graphics with 1GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA hard drive and 4GB of system memory. There was even enough change left over for interior lighting — and we all know about the direct correlation between ground effects for nerds and frags per minute. Available now for $710.

[Via SlashGear]

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

iBUYPOWER’s Gamer Power 906 rig does Intel Quad-core for a bit over $700 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 05:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After years of teasing — FLEPia was first announced in April of 2007, and first proven in 2006 — Fujitsu has at last released its color e-book (or e-paper mobile terminal, as they’d like you to call it) to the masses. Featuring an 8-inch XGA screen capable of displaying 260,000 colors, along with Bluetooth, WiFi and up to 4GB of storage via SD card, and measuring less than half an inch thick, FLEPia’s not just getting by on color alone. Fujitsu promises 40 hours of continuos use, and the unit can be operated by its touchscreen or the assortment of function buttons. Naturally you can do the regular e-book thing, but the Japanese version of the device also includes full-on Windows CE 5.0, which would probably be a bit of a chore to use with the relatively slow screen refresh times of e-ink (1.8 seconds for a single wipe), but undeniably retrofuturistic. FLEPia ships on April 20th in Japan for 99,750 Yen (about $1,010 US).

[Via Engadget Japanese]

Read - English press release
Read - Videos of FLEPia in action

Filed under: Handhelds

Fujitsu melts faces and wallets with FLEPia, the first color e-book for general consumption originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 02:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, you could just get a plain old KIRF Motorola Aura, but those looking for a double dose of fake luxury will no doubt want to give some serious consideration to this latest knock-off wonder, which adds some of that always popular Louis Vuitton excess to Moto’s often imitated sense of style. Of course, that imitation doesn’t exactly extend all that far, with this so-called Imobile Phone V453 ditching the Aura’s pricey circular display in favor of a not at all pricey square-within-a-circle display, although the phone does one-up the Aura with a eye-catching ring of LED lights around the display (hit up the link below for a glimpse of that). Or, if the Aura’s not your thing, you can also save a few bucks and snag a fake Louis Vuitton RAZR… or not.

[Via Engadget German]

Filed under: Cellphones

Keepin’ it real fake, part CXCI: Motorola Aura gets the fake Louis Vuitton treatment originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Screen Grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today’s movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dt com.

Seriously, can ‘ER’ get any better at this late date? What’s that? You’d like to see Nurse Hathaway and Dr. Ross in bed together, with a cameo by the Palm Treo Pro? Done. Sure, Dr. Ross doesn’t seem terribly impressed by the nurse’s news that the heart and kidney are viable and ready for new homes, but whatever! That phone looks hot! One more shot of the blessed trio after the break.

[Thanks, Yehuda]

Continue reading Screen Grabs: Julianna Margulies and George Clooney in bed with the Palm Treo Pro

Filed under: Cellphones

Screen Grabs: Julianna Margulies and George Clooney in bed with the Palm Treo Pro originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You may think that the world’s most expensive vacuum would be a Dyson or some other high-tech cleaning contraption, but that’s apparently not the case, at least according to the vacuum authority that is the Guinness Book of World Records. No, the world’s most expensive vacuum is apparently this otherwise ordinary Electrolux, which has been adorned with 3,730 Swarovski crystals by Polish designer Lukaz Jemiol and now commands the princely sum of £13,825 (or just under $20,000). That may not help the vacuum’s cleaning ability much, but it’ll certainly help it hold its own against all the other Swarovski-encrusted products out there, which, last we checked, includes everything imaginable. Better act quick if you’re looking to add to the collection though, as this one is strictly one of a kind.

Filed under: Household

World’s most expensive vacuum also claims title of world’s gaudiest originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Generally speaking, SmartQ has stuck to what it’s best at — mediocre portable media players — without deviating an inch. Finally, someone at the company conjured up enough courage to take a risk, and we think the outcome is pretty decent. The simply titled and not-at-all-confusing HDTV Player is the firm’s very first set-top-box, which aims to play back a litany of high-definition files on one’s HDTV. As predicted, the box offers up an HDMI 1.3 port for getting all that lovely 720p+ content onto your screen, and there’s also a pair of USB 2.0 ports for connecting external HDDs and the like. Beyond that, details are astonishingly sparse, but we get the feeling it’ll be quite some time (read: forever) before this thing floats far from the shores of Asia.

[Via MP4Nation]

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

SmartQ introduces HDTV Player, lets it explain itself originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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