New Home Gadgets

Verizon Wireless began offering unlimited voice plans on Tuesday and it seems that T-Mobile and AT&T now want to follow suit. T-Mobile USA has announced that it too will offer unlimited calling and messaging plans beginning on Thursday. Unlimited messaging will include text messages, picture messages, and instant messages. The new unlimited plans will be available to new and existing T-Mobile subscribers. T-Mobile will continue to offer myFaves plans at US$39.99 a month.

AT&T also announced new unlimited plans beginning on Friday. Not coincidentally, it too will begin these plans at US$99 a month.

(Read the full post about ‘T-Mobile and AT&T to also offer unlimited plans’…)

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Apparently some Toshiba customers have gotten the idea that since the company has ditched its hd dvd format, they should be able to return recently purchased players or get some kind of consideration for buying equipment that suddenly seems worth a lot less than it did when Toshiba was making lavish promises about the format. Valleywag neatly kills off those fantasies with this response from a Toshiba flak, who seems to be saying it’s your own damn fault for believing Toshiba in the first place:There is nothing wrong with the products so we aren’t accepting returns from customers … [Customers] understood that there were two competing formats and understood that one of them would probably prevail … (Read the full post about ‘Toshiba to HD DVD Adopters: Tough Luck, Suckers!’…)

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Posted Feb 20th 2008 1:21PM by Darren MurphFiled under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment For those with under a grand to spend and an incessant hankering for a new projector, we’ve got phenomenal news. Epson has added two more 3LCD PJs to its ever-expanding PowerLite line, both of which feature an XGA (1,024 x 768) resolution, a built-in Ethernet port for remote monitoring and control, an integrated ten-watt speaker and a closed-caption decoder to boot. As for the 83+, you’ll find 2,200 lumens compared to the 822+’s 2,600, but other than that, the two are essentially identical. Good enough for you? (Read the full post about ‘Epson introduces PowerLite 83+ and 822+ multimedia projectors’…)

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It is nearly a year since the Emotiv prototype was demonstrated to Ubergizmo, and as one expects, a whole lot can happen within a year. The latest Emotiv model is almost ready for prime time action, where you will soon be able to control a computer application (albeit in a very limited manner) simply by conjuring an appropriate thought. Sounds perfect for gaming, as sometimes our reflexes (or hardware) fails us during the most crucial moments. Unfortunately, Emotiv’s technology is far from ready if it were to be used in a highly accurate environment, so that will take a fair bit of time to develop assuming such lofty standards can be achieved in the first place. (Read the full post about ‘Emotiv is Nearly Ready’…)

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                Chumby is the gadget that wants to be loved by developers and geeky dudes who didn’t have dates for Valentine’s Day. Sometimes, both of those consumer demographics signify the exact same people, and they might like this one if they can get over the fact that it looks like a toy for a 12-year-old girl. Available beginning this week, the Chumby mini-computer streams personal music channels like Pandora, checks on your favorite social networking sites for updates, and can be used as a photo frame by grabbing your pictures over-the-air from the net and streaming them on its 3.5” LCD screen. (Read the full post about ‘DIY-Friendly Chumby Gadget Now Available for Purchase’…)

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Posted Feb 20th 2008 12:00PM by Ryan BlockFiled under: Announcements, Features We’re creeping up on the Oscars, which means it must also be time for you to vote in the 2007 Engadget Awards! Based on your nominations (and a couple of our own) we’ve compiled a list of over 150 gadgets and technologies that made 2007 the blockbuster year it was for consumer electronics.Votes will be tallied until Saturday, March 1st; after we’ve checked for abuse we’ll publish the results alongside our own Editors’ Choice picks the following week. May the best gadgets win! (Read the full post about ‘Vote for the 2007 Engadget Awards!’…)

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For those who love typing late into the night (or surfing questionable websites), there is the Thanko SIRE2SET silent multimedia keyboard. I guess this is best used with an equally silent mouse that Thanko already has. The SIRE2SET keyboard can be hooked up to two PCs through a couple of separate USB connections, where you use a sliding switch on the keyboard to decide which PC you want to work with. Too bad this is a Japan-only product, retailing for $46. I can forsee folks with two workstations having this - one for them to surf the latest celebrity scandals, switching over to the actual work PC whenever the boss walks by. (Read the full post about ‘Thanko SIRE2SET Silent Keyboard’…)

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Posted Feb 20th 2008 8:03AM by Darren MurphFiled under: Desktops We’re not going to set this one up with some creepy bedtime story like Vigor does on its own website, but seriously, this beast is kind of scary. The aptly-dubbed Colossus houses Intel’s Skulltrail platform along with two Core 2 Extreme QX9775 quad-core processors, and that’s just the beginning. You’ll also find a menacing (albeit somewhat unsightly) chassis, a 1,000-watt PSU, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, twin 74GB Raptor hard drives, 2TB of storage on a pair of RAIDed SATA HDDs, dual 512MB GeForce 8800 GTS Xtremes, a dual-layer DVD burner (skimp much?) and a 3.5-inch floppy drive for loading up your tax template from 1998. (Read the full post about ‘Vigor’s Colossus gets you close to Skulltrail, bankruptcy’…)

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Posted Feb 20th 2008 10:53AM by Paul MillerFiled under: Desktops, LaptopsLook, we sense the Vista hate out there, but frankly we think it’s your own dang business what OS you choose to run. If Vista SP1 is rocking your world right now, we say more power to you, if XP is more your pace then you’re certainly not alone, and if you’re still trying to install Firefox on Haiku we feel your pain. That said, XP users are getting a bit of love this week, since Microsoft just made Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2 publicly available via Windows Update. You have to download a little registry key to help Windows Update know you’re RC2 fodder, and remove any previous version of SP3 from your machine, but it should be smooth sailing from there. (Read the full post about ‘Windows XP SP3 RC2 publicly available. That’s three times the SP!’…)

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Posted Feb 20th 2008 5:30AM by Thomas RickerFiled under: LaptopsAccording to DigiTimes, the reason we haven’t seen any CloudBooks on sale is due to the weather. Recent heavy snowfalls in China wreaked havoc on the local rail systems and power supplies leaving FIC unable to meet their targets. According to “sources,” retail shipments will now be pushed back to mid-March. Now our quandary. What’s more dubious? Everex’s newly posted 2/21/2008 availability date or China’s claimed ability to control the weather during the summer olympics? Read — Everex Read — DigiTimes (Read the full post about ‘CloudBook delays caused by the weather, ironically’…)

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