Plug the Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick ($130) into a USB port, and get yourself instant HDTV on a laptop. It also turns your PC into a personal video recorder with its included program guide software, and also gives you a remote control for lean-back comfort.

Teamed up with an additional remote control Pinnacle calls the PCTV MCE Companion ($100), it works with Windows XP Media Center Edition and turns that PC into an analog and digital TV set.

The only downside? All of this HDTV must be received over the air with an old-fashioned antenna. Now if there were CableCards involved, this would really capture our undivided attention. Alas, products like that will have to wait until Vista is released early next year. – Charlie White

Product Pages: PCTV HD Pro Stick and Pinnacle PCTV MCE Companion [Pinnacle, via CrunchGear]
from gizmodo

Nokia has launched a fancy-pants slider that is the same as every other damn slider out there, but it includes a nice camera. The camera boasts two glorious megapixels and can record VGA video in addition to zoom capabilities and basic photo editing functions. Other than that—same shit, different case. Bluetooth, e-mail, SMS, MMS, etc. It does include wireless picture printing, and a 512 MB memory card. It will be available in black and white through 3G later this year for $400 or so without a contract. – Travis Hudson

Nokia 6288 3G Slider Announced [Mobiledia]
from gizmodo

While we wait for Apple to get their MacBook act together, a few more Core 2 Duo stragglers are wandering in, and this time it’s Lenovo’s N100 from their 3000 series getting the Merom boost. Beyond the processor goodies, which seem to encompass most of the Intel’s offerings, the N100 boasts of an 802.11n MIMO WiFi option, your choice of a 14.1 or 15.4-inch widescreen LCD, and an option with the 15-inchers for an NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 card running 64 or 128MB of memory. The 15-inch models also seem to have an option for a built-in webcam, but we’re low on deets. Since Lenovo isn’t telling us any different, we’re guessing the screen res options match up with the previous offerings, along with the rest of the specs. We should be seeing these for sale any day now — they’re listed at the Lenovo site now, but one of the links is broken and some of the specs don’t match — and prices should start around $800.

More info
from engadget

Our good friends in Santa Clara, California have been very busy as of late — Intel‘s working on getting lasers into silicon and getting its Core 2 Duos into everything under the sun (but sometimes not). But Moore and Noyce’s baby isn’t stopping there, no sir: DigiTimes is reporting that Intel’s first quad-core “Kentsfield” chip, the 2.66 GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6700, will be officially called the Quadro and should be available starting in mid-November. Meanwhile, Reg Hardware chimes in that while Intel is also ramping up its Merom-based Celeron M series for budget laptops, the more interesting news is that the first low-voltage Core 2 Duos will hit the streets in January 2007. According to the Reg, the next generation of low-voltage Centrino chips, the L7200 and the L7400 (code-named the “Santa Rosa”), will feature Core 2 Duos running at 1.33 GHz and 1.5 GHz, priced at $284 and $316, respectively. Speaking of low-voltage chips, we haven’t decided if trying to overclock one would be an incredibly brilliant or an incredibly foolish idea — but we’ll find out soon enough.

Read – DigiTimes [Photo courtesy of Tom's Hardware]
Read – Reg Hardware

From engadget

Thanks to MIT’s Paul D. Sclavounos, we might get a reprieve from the eyesore problem of windmills, while still sticking with their clean-and-cheap energy benefits. Unfortunately, hapless birds aren’t going to get much of a respite. The plan is to plant these things offshore, far enough out into the water for the skinny white turbines to disappear on the horizon, but we’re sure a few seagulls will be able to find those “invisible” blades all the same. The turbines can be anchored in water up to 650 deep, and can withstand even hurricane-generated waves. Another benefit of the system is the strong and steady wind out at sea, so the 90-meter turbines should be able to generate twice as much electricity in comparison to their near-shore counterparts. Count us in, we never liked seagulls too much anyways.

More info
from engadget

Las Vegas-based Seamless Wireless looks to be keeping most of the details on its new UMPC under wraps until CES lands in its hometown early next year, but the design alone should be enough to build at least a modicum of interest from those looking for something a little different than the usual fare. Sure, it’s basically just a standard UMPC with a fold-up keyboard stuck on, but every flip and fold on a gadget gets an extra bonus point from us. The only other details that the folks at Seamless seem willing to divulge are that the device will include Bluetooth, WiFi, and cellular connectivity, and that it’ll pack a 4-inch LCD and a promised 10 hours of battery life — at least it did in the concept stage, when Seamless also said it’d be ready for market by October 2006, and that clearly ain’t gonna happen.

[Via SlashGear]
more info
from engadget

After busting out those floating windmills earlier today, you’d think the MIT types would take a little break, maybe relax for a nice evening of D&D, but instead they’re still hard at work, bringing power to the people. This time they’re thinking small, with a new gas-turbine engine the size of a quarter designed to supplement or replace the battery in consumer electronics. The new “engine on a chip” technology builds all the traditional parts of a gas-turbine engine using silicon, allowing for utterly tiny, reliable and efficient components. The turbine blades spin at 20,000 revolutions per second, and the mini-generator produces 10 watts of power once up and running. Unfortunately, the MIT wiz-kids haven’t quite got a working model yet. Each component has been successfully built and tested, but they haven’t squeezed them all together, though they should have it all up and running simultaneously by the end of the year. The tech could be a boon to the Army (which is funding the project), since troops are often required to carry up to three days worth of laptop batteries for a field mission, but we’re totally stoked to start smogging it up in Starbucks with our little turbine a-whirring and spreadsheet a-crunching. Other than that spreadsheet part. Those suck.

[Via Slashdot]
More info
from engadget