Not every mag has the option of hitting up the corporate headquarters for their hands-on shots. So check NotebookReview who managed to pull the C90S out their hat while tooling about the ASUS headquarters in Taiwan. Yup, that’s their new ASmobile C90S barebone laptop up there which offers far more expansion options than your average bear. Everything — we mean everything (according to ASUS) — can be configured and later upgraded to your liking right on down to your choice of processor, MXM graphics, and 15.4-inch LCDs. Now get out of here kid and check the pics after the read link. We’re not expecting this to ship until midish-Mayish but you’ll need the time to convince your CIO that platform upgrades — not leases — are the way of the future.

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As mentioned a few days ago, Verizon Wireless seems to be prepping for the release of a new dual band version of the venerable Blackberry 8800, christened the 8830. With this handy bit of tech you will be able to use CDMA radio while in the States (and maybe Canada?) and switch over to that good old fashioned GSM love while abroad. The pic above clearly shows the 8830 in silver, while the images in our last article seem to show it in black. No other solid info is available, but you can be sure we will be updating as the news and details trickle in.

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Prepare to get your shine on VZW customers — the LG VX8700 is up, pretty, and ready for purchase. As a wink-wink, nudge-nudge in the direction of LG’s Shine branding, Verizon calls the new clamshell a “shiny new addition” to their LG lineup. No surprises on the specs: V Cast support, stereo Bluetooth, microSD expansion and 2 megapixel cam. Ink a 2-year deal and she’s yours for $179.99 after $50 online discount. Now go get it, the first Shine has arrived Stateside and is exclusive to Verizon.

[Thanks, V-Doc and everyone who sent this in]
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It’s no secret that FM transmitters are dodgy at times, but if you were wading through the endless supply of MP3 watches on the market in an effort to find one a notch below hideous, having that feature built-in certainly wouldn’t hurt. The king of all things USB has upped the collective ante once more, as its FMP3 Watch not only musters a bearable design scheme, but it also offers up a nice laundry list of specifications to boot. Aside from telling you the time and day of the week, it also boasts 512MB, 1GB, or 2GB of internal memory for MP3 / WMA playback, headphone out, an integrated voice recorder, USB connectivity, volume controls, eight-hours of battery life (three if beaming over FM), and the obligatory FM transmitter to stream your tunes to one of several FM options. If you’re anxious to get your wrist into one of these suckas, all three flavors are available right now, and can be had for Â¥12,800 ($108), Â¥16,800 ($142), and Â¥19,800 ($167) from least capacious to most.

[Via EverythingUSB]
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At this point, WiFi-equipped DAPs aren’t completely novel, but they’re still novel enough to command a good deal of attention — especially when they’re coming from companies like Sandisk through collaborations with Zing. In fact, the $249 Sansa Connect bears a truly striking resemblance (both physically and in user experience) to the reference device Zing was showing off last year — much more so than its distant cousin from the same Zing drafting board, Sirius’ Stiletto. Though the Sansa Connect obiviously loses the Stiletto’s satellite radio capabilites, it dominates the Stiletto (and the Zune, for that matter) in its effective use of 802.11 airwaves. Why most manufacturers have yet to pick up on the WiFi formula for this class of devices, we don’t understand, but hey folks, it’s easy: give us streaming, easy PC-free downloading, and firmware updates over the air. We’re all awash in hotspots at this point, so let’s take full advantage, yeah? The Connect is tied to Yahoo! Music Unlimited for its subscription download model and streaming radio, and we’ve gotta say, a WiFi DAP really brings the model into its own. It almost trivializes the need for serious storage in the device — this one makes do with 4GB plus microSD expansion — because you can get literally any music in Yahoo’s catalog whenever you have a data connection handy. All of Yahoo’s features carry over, too: ratings can be saved from the Connect, album art is downloaded in real time, and you’ve even got Messenger on here. All of LAUNCHcast’s stations are available to stream, and of course, you can build your own station based on personal tastes. And for users of other services that employ secure WMA, rest easy: you’ll be able to pull your songs into Yahoo Music Jukebox (or, if you subscribe to Unlimited, just grab the song again if you’re so inclined). We tested this with URGE and it worked like a champ.

On to more superficial matters, we were pretty delighted with the Connect’s size, appearance, and gorgeous QVGA display; the integrated speaker is a cute trick and the interface was, by and large, easy to navigate and understand. The scroll wheel has a slightly nicer feeling to it (in our most humble of opinions) than the Stiletto’s, and the buttons have decent spacing and feel. The device wasn’t without its fair share of gotchas, though. For example, dynamic menus for choices involving live data from Yahoo! Music (recommended tracks, for example) would occasionally require two presses to actuate where they should’ve required one. The first press would cause the display to say “Updating” — fair enough, it’s gotta grab new data from the ‘nets — but after it would update, it’d take us back to the same menu again and the second press would get us going. Hey, whatever, that’s what software updates are for, and since they’re automatically pushed over WiFi, we’re not going to worry about it too much.

We’re disappointed that the Connect isn’t a little more open than it is; we’d like to be able to stream whatever the heck we want for starters, but Yahoo! Music Unlimited and LAUNCHcast aren’t bad starts. Now the trick is to keep up the WiFi momentum for these things — Apple, Creative, iRiver, Archos, we’re looking straight at you!

Gallery: Hands-on with the Sandisk Sansa Connect

    

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