get your wood on – laptops that is

Grand idea this! I have seen the odd mod like the wooden and stained glass one but this is more along the lines of a commercial product run complete with wood fascia for the more discerning amongst us.

linkage: more pictures over at sci fi tech blog 

ultimate live performing rig

I have just posted this on VJ Forums

I am wondering what the ‘Ultimate’ (entry-level) live performing rig would consist of.

I am at the stage where I need to get a dedicated box, probably before a new years party next month.

I figure if I can work out what the ulitmate rig is, and the cost, I can take steps backwards until I hit my maximum price point.

I have been scrounging articles from around the place and have come up with a couple of possibilities. For obvious reasons a kick ass laptop would be pretty good. Nice and portable. Plenty of speed, and little power consumption. Something like an
Alienware Aurora™ m9700 or Sagar NP9890-V . The Alienware seem better specc’d with the Dual Sli cards. But there is a lot of bad talk about poor build quality and crappy service, 15% charges on returns etc etc. So I think it would be a bit silly to buy from them.

non computer of the future, today. holograms? portable projectors? invisible pc?

I have been thinking a lot recently about converging technologies and the evolution of the PC and the interweb. Wondering what the average home pc will look like in five and then say ten years. This has all come about because I have been looking into a new pc. I don’t just want your average run of the mill pc. I have a few ideas coming together slowly and will post more on that as things develop.

The flip side is that I am reading some interesting tech articles and have come across a future solution, that is virtually available now. Imagine a small portable AV projector and a laser keyboard, you know, one of the ones where you project a keyboard onto a desk with a laser. Yeah. No I’m serious. When you press the pictures of a key on the desk you interrupt the beam and it can then tell where you have pressed.

OK so take a small portable projector and a holographic keyboard. Throw in a light pen that works the same way as a mouse. Press to click and extra buttons for options as well as special writing options/macros. All right you take these and slip them into your pockets. You’ll look like a bit of a nerd if you put the pen in your breast pocket, but if you have gadgets like these you can probably pull it of, just picture it:

You wander from your snazzy apartment out into the bustle of metropolitan life. You believe in not judging people but that can’t prevent the slight smirk from reaching the corners of your mouth anyway. All these smug ipod toters. Thinking they are the bomb with their little white headphones and portable mp3 doodads. Ah well. They’ll catch on soon for sure.

You pull into your friends coffee shop on the nearby highstreet and set your self up for a busy mornings work blogging. You unpack your tripod and extend the legs, angling the mini projector so it points at the wall across the table from you. You plug the cables into the wall sockets and power it on. The glow of the projector easily covers the 30 inch space in front of you. The glowing red keyboard materialises instantly on the table half in your cup of coffee. You move the coffee and take a seat. Taking the pen you click to open firefox and get to work.

Ah thats the life. So

l computers, super pc’s of the future, today

By now most people have come across Alienware in some form or other. For me it was a love affair via their website. One of those sites I would check out from time to time back in my gaming days, and drool over what amounted to the best gaming machines (and therefore best pc’s) money could buy. Or couldn’t in my case.

A friend turned up out of the blue from Korea one day sporting a live in the flesh Alienware laptop. What a beast. More of a mobile desktop than a laptop but that is what I desire anyway. ‘Portables’ are for wimps.
I was pretty surprised to stumble across the l computers website the other day. Alienware has some competition been supplanted as my no. 1 dream machine. It was that easy. Here’s why!

You need to see this website for it all to sink in. But take a look at snaps of their desktops and laptops after the jump.

apple recalls 1.1 million batteries due to fire hazard

Something to de-smugify those Apple users. I could hear their snide little cackles of glee from the sidelines when they heard about the Dell (i.e. windoze using) recall of 4 million batteries. Well this will shut them up. Apple who also buy a bunch of their batteries from Sony, have issued a recall of a million odd batteries as well. Good to see these manufactures aren’t cutting corners on safety to bring you the most affordable pc they can.

linkage: via gear live 

dell battery recall [finally]

So after 3 or 4 months of laptops exploding around the world Dell has finally issued a battery recall in conjunction with some Consumer Safety Commission. The recall is somewhere in the vicinity of 4 million units. Yes you read correctly 4 million units. Making it the largest recall in the history of consumer electronics.

photo of exploding laptop after the jump