Find Our Latest Video Reviews on YouTube!
If you want to stay on top of all of our video reviews of the latest tech, be sure to check out and subscribe to the Gear Live YouTube channel, hosted by Andru Edwards! It’s free!
Here’s something for doggie lovers around the world. Snackshotz Pellet Gun is a plastic pistol that fires disc-shaped treats up to 12 feet away. The idea behind this product is to help your lazy dogs get their exercise in a fun way for both of you. I suppose the ever increasing obesity problem in canines sparked the concept. The dog is supposed to react to the sound of the trigger, triggering his need to find the disc treat. Comes in beef, chicken, MightyMint flavors. The site features a funny video of a fat bulldog chasing a few of these in someone’s apartment.
Read More 
| Snackshotz via Boing Boing
If you’ve been watching TV lately and don’t have a DVR to skip through commercials, you may have already experienced some new Panasonic spots. Their latest line of notebooks, dubbed “Toughbooks,” are geared toward those of us who travel with our notebooks. Although not all of us are that clumsy, we sometimes like to drink a cup ‘o joe as we blog. This notebook was demonstrated to us at an electronics retailer where they poured a gallon of water right on the keyboard. Right after that, they dropped it about 5 feet to the linoleum floor. The notebook wasn’t even scratched. The Toughbooks come in a variety of flavors as far as specs are concerned. They even come in different levels of “toughness” - rugged and semi-rugged.
Read More | Panosonic
Advertisement
If you looking for a more versatile stand alone GPS system, the GV-201 from GlobalSat may be for you. Coming in February, it features a 4 inch touch screen display and voice guided directions. It uses GlobalSat’s much applauded chipset in the SiRF Star III. What makes this GPS different from others is its ability to display photos, listen to MP3’s, and watch MP4 video via an SD Card Storage Slot built into the device. Not a bad way to get lost.
Read More | GlobalSat
Latest Gear Live Videos
Laptops, to this day, are less configurable than desktops. When I first thought about why I would want to do this on my notebook I didn’t realize the tremendous advantages that undervolting would have. My two biggest complaints about my notebook are overall heat and battery life, which would be solved by undervolting. In the article linked, the author uses an Acer powered by an AMD Turion 64. The applications mentioned are not Mac compatible - sorry iBook and Powerbook owners. The best part is that he tweaks it just right to avoid performance problems. The end result of the lower voltage? He can actually put his laptop on his lap and for a longer amount of time on his battery.
Read More | NordicHardware via MAKE: Blog
Non-Ergonomic Nintendo Mice
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Accessories, USB, PC / Laptop, Peripherals, Video Games,
Calling all retro gaming geeks - now’s your chance to show your roots at the next LAN party while developing a severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome. These computer mice do look cool, we must say. Pretending that your click-fingers are really Mario’s feet stomping the head of the Goomba has gotta be good times. Of course, a Mario version - also lacking anti-aliasing - is available as well. You can grab one for $14.95 USD.
Read More | Lik-Sang via Gadget Review
So, many of the results are in. If you are still on the fence about whether you should pick up the Treo 700w, look no further than a few of these trusted reviews.
It seems the overall consensus is that the 700w isn’t a far enough evolutionary step above the Treo 650. Still, if you aren’t an owner of a previous generation Treo, and are looking for a Windows Mobile 5.0 device, it may be for you. personally, we like the PPC-6700/XV6700 UTStarcom phone ourselves.
Hybrid hard drives are similar enough to the drives we all use today, but with the addition of NV (non-volatile) memory on board. The memory acts similarly to the cache on the current crop of drives, but since it’s non-volatile, a system crash won’t cause you to lose everything that hasn’t been written to the disk. Microsoft is encouraging manufacturers to release hybrid drives in preparation of it’s Vista operating system, which is due for release later this year. The hybrid drives would increase performance and allow the system to boot faster (if configured to boot off the NV RAM).
However, the aforementioned type of hybrid isn’t what Microsoft and Samsung were showing off with the current prototype. Instead of persuing performance gains alone, they’re also looking to save power in mobile applications. The drive utilizes 1GB of Samsung’s OneNAND flash memory, and uses it to store any data destined to be written to the drive. The drive doesn’t actually start spinning until the cache is completely full, and then does a quick dump to the disk. By operating in this fashion, the drive only spins 30 to 45 seconds during a 30-minute window of time. Since a hard drive normally consumes up to 15% of a laptop’s battery charge, the hybrid drive could significantly extend runtime as well as reduce overall noise. The drive is expected to start shipping in quantity in late 2006.
Read More | CNet News
Video: Half Life Beat in 45 Minutes
Posted by Brandon Gribin Categories: First Person Shooters, Internet, PC,
Yeah, we had a hard time believing it at first, but someone beat the original Half Life in 45 minutes. The clip is up on Google Video and really has to be seen. From what we can tell, whoever got through the game in the incredibly short amount of time did so legitimately without cheating. Watching the video almost made me want to boot up Half Life and see how quickly I could run through it - but then I realized that I probably wouldn’t stand a chance and that I bluntly don’t have the skills that this guy has, whoever he is. Hey, maybe he works at Valve?
Read More | Google Video
No Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility Updates Until March
Posted by Brandon Gribin Categories: Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox Live,
According to Active Xbox, the backwards compatibility team over at Microsoft is taking a break and won’t be releasing any new BC updates until March. While this news is unfortunate, we recognize that the guys over in Seattle need a break since they worked their butts off to get over 200 games on the BC list for the 360’s launch. We have a feeling we’ll get along just fine without being able to play some old Xbox games since the 360 has a good number of solid games already - and EA’s Fight Night Round 3 will be out in less than a month.
Read More | Active Xbox
Are you scared of the dark…or more importantly, what can be hiding in the dark under your bed? Does the morning light bring the sweet relief of being able to sprint into the bathroom because you were too frightened to get up during the night? If so, then Solutions may have the answer to your problem (no, not a porta-pottie). It’s the diminuative (5” diameter) Blue Moon Night Light. This UFO-shaped object is comprised of 14 blue LED’s (because red LED’s would have made it look like hell was under your bed), and has a clear ABS bottom for the light to radiate around your room. If you’re only slightly scared of the dark (instead of insanely petrified by it), then you’ll appreciate the ability to dim the intense blue light to a softer, more soothing glow. It can be yours for $29.95.
Read More | Solutions via Strange New Products
