eK-gadgets info

We had a small notebooks day today here at MobileWhack with so many small laptops emerging from various manufacturers. The leader of the pack, the Eee inventor, Asus, will be launching soon the Eee 1000, which is a 10 inch notebook.

All this is bound to happen in a few days in Taipei at Computex 2008. The Eee PC 1000 is Asus’ way of answering to feedback received from their customers. They are asking for a bigger display and a wider keyboard for a better Eee experience, and I couldn’t agree more!

The Asus Eee 1000 will be available later this year and we hope we can count on some other hardwares upgrades besides the extra inch. Hopefully we will know more about this laptop in a few days. We’re also curious about the official release date and of course the price. If you are in Taiwan, give us a hint once you find out more.

Asus P320 PDA has just been launched by Asus in Taiwan. For now there’s no information on when it will be available in other countries, but we know the retail price. For just $390 you get:

• Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional,
• a 2.8-inch touchscreen display,
• GPS,
• 2-megapixel camera,
• EDGE/GPRS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth,
• USB 2.0,
• TI OMAP 850 200 MHz processor,
• 128 MB Flash ROM + 64 MB DDR RAM,
• microSD card slot.

Asus is particularly proud of their GPS system which supposedly has a faster satellite connection no matter where you are.

via SlashPhone

Hmm…Why am I not excited? Other than being a bit more pudgy, the Nokia 7310 Classic is pretty much the 6300 Classic candybar with a different name tag. It runs on Symbian S40, has a 2-megapixel camera, and holds a 2-inch 262k color display. Nothing as flashy as WiFi but you do get Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP and USB. It is good to see that more and more cell phones are adopting a 3.5mm headphone jack, which can be found on the 7310 Classic too.

With a rumored $260 price tag when it becomes available, somewhat equal to that of the 6300 when it came out, we will have to wait and see if it enjoys the same success as the latter.

Why is everyone now trying to come up with smaller and smaller laptops? Are they trying to compensate for anything? Shouldn’t this be reversed?
What’s next a 5 inch laptop? Or is it going to be called a 5 inch touch screen cell phone?

Dell is getting ready to compete with Asus Eee and the new Acer. And the HP Mini Note. And the Razorbook. They will tell us more about this mini Inspiron at Computex but in the meanwhile we know this Dell will have 8.9 inch LCD, an 8-in-1 card reader, the integrated webcam, direct media playback buttons, and some wireless access options. All of that for an under $500 price tag and with the OS of your choice.

Review based on a production Canon EOS 450D

Four and a half years have passed since the first affordable digital SLR from Canon; the EOS 300D (Digital Rebel). In that time we have witnessed two further iterations (the EOS 350D and EOS 400D) leading up to today’s fourth generation EOS 450D, with twice the megapixel count of the original (twelve versus six) in a smaller body with a far wider range of functionality and features and a $200 lower list price. Since those heady days in 2004 when the EOS 300D was the only kid on the block we’ve seen Nikon, Pentax and Olympus all attempt to hit the same sweet spot of size, features and price at the ‘lower end’ of the DSLR market, with varying degrees of success. Without a doubt the EOS 450D will have to do more today to prove itself in an increasingly crowded market.

On the third page of this review you’ll find a detailed breakdown of all of the changes and updates compared to the EOS 400D but the headlines are; a larger 3.0″ LCD monitor, Live View with both passive and contrast detect AF, Spot metering, improved auto-focus, 3.5 fps continuous shooting a larger viewfinder and a switch SD/SDHC for storage (all previous cameras in this range were Compact Flash). Other features appear to be inherited from the EOS 40D; 14-bit image pipeline, Highlight Tone priority, optional High ISO noise reduction, ‘My Menu’ and display of the ISO sensitivity on the viewfinder status line. There’s also the new stabilized kit lens (for review and samples click here).

Note that throughout this review we will refer to the EOS 450D by its European name; if you live in other parts of the world you’ll know the camera by (in order of silliness) Rebel XSi or Kiss X2 Digital, but they’re all the same.

Via : dpreview