I have to admit, when it came to taking notes in class or even paying attention, I wasn’t exactly the best student. But when it came time for tests, no amount of puppy dog eyes would convince fellow students to lend me their work to go photocopy. I really wish that I could send myself the DocuPen RC800 that PLANon sent me back to my younger self because it would have made everything much easier.

The device looks like Bill Gates would wield it as a wand in his upcoming Harry Potter appearance. Basically this pen like device is a self standing scanner. You just slide it slowly over the image and it’s captured onto the onboard memory or micro SD card. You can send it to your computer through the USB mini port, so that 200 pages worth of notes can be copied in beautiful 400 dpi without leaving the classroom.

The only issue? It is BY FAR the most confusing device I have every used. At a price tag of $99, I probably wouldn’t have bought it back in school anyways.

Tags: Bill Gates, DocuPen RC800, micro SD card, PLANon

I’ve had my fair share of useless equipment pass through my hands over the years, especially gimmicky speaker systems. So when I received my review copy of the SurroundXi from Rapha, I instantly stereo typed the little battery powered tube speaker system as another POS that’d I’d surely be disappointed with. Boy was I wrong!

The device has a USB input that’s meant to take advantage of devices like thumb drives and iPod Shuffles, where you just plug them in an play the music directly off it. The sound volume is amazing and with it’s 4 AAA batteries or power supply, you’ll get at least 4 hours out of the device.

At a store price as high as $39.99 at K-Mart and Target, it’s a bit steep, but check out what you can grab it for on Ebay.

Caveat Emptor – The device is not capable of directly interfacing with anything besides usb input or line in. The other pictures lie.

Tags: Rapha, stereo, SurroundXi

There are two things that every good gaming rig needs out of a case: style and functionality. We gamers view and treat our computers in the same way that most treat their cars. Just from looking at the pictures of the CoolerMaster Cosmos S Case I pretty much began to drool. The case is more mesh than metal, allowing for a friendlier feel and a much cooler enviroment for to support the plethora of overclocked devices you’d fill it up with. The side panel is mounted with a 200mm fan specifically to benefit your dual or quad sli video card setup and you can even bump some of the fans out of the case almost entirely to make sure you’ve filled up every last inch inside.

On top of the system, you’ll find a concealable fully illuminated control panel and additional plugs as well as three fans on the top of the case. And if that’s not enough cooling for you, it has seamless integration for a liquid cooling unit. All it’ll cost you is $299 for the case and you’re extended ATX or ATX motherboard won’t be asking you for another present for a long time.

Tags: ATX, CoolerMaster Cosmos S Case, pc, PC Case Gear

U.S. fans of Maddox’s witty rant about the iPhone will undoubtedly jump for joy when they hear that Nokia has officially announced that their N95 8GB will make it’s way stateside. With a 5.0 megapixel camera enhanced with Carl Zeiss optics, built-in A-GPS, Wi-Fi, HSDPA and dual sliding functionality, there isn’t much this device can’t do.

Nokia is willing to let loyal customers in on the benefits of their Nokia Maps voice guidance system for 6 months free if they’re willing to drop the $749 on picking up this bad larry. We’ll most likely see this excellent piece of hardware branded and subsidized under some of the major carriers but by how much and who is anyones guess.

Tags: Maddox, N95 8GB, Nokia

It looks like the saving grace that many had hope WiMax to be has actually proved fairly lackluster when implemented by Buzz Broadband in Australia. The purported 50 kilometer distance that WiMax boasts fell short at a stunningly low maximum of 2 kilometers with speeds so slow that voice calls where unmanageable on the service, similar to how my iPhone is.

With Buzz Broadband and fellow Australian competitors Intermode throwing in the flag, we’ll have to see how Sprint and Clearwire implement WiMax in the States or if AT&T and Verizon will beat them to it with their LTE Technology.

Source: New York Times

Tags: AT&T, Clearwire, Sprint, verizon, WiMax

For all of you out there who’ve been dying to get your Rockband together but have been suffering due to the lack of Wii support, you’re in luck as Harmonix has officially announced that the Wii version of Rockband will be set to hit stores June, 22nd at a price of $170. For that price, you’ll find yourself opening up the special edition box which includes the game, drums, a guitar, and a mic. Unfortunately their is no information at this point to indicate whether the peripherals will require a Wii mote attached to each of them like the Guitar Hero 3 Les Paul does.

Unlike the other version of the game, Wii owners will be locked in with 63 base songs and 5 bonus ones, but have to ability to download new songs through the Wii’s online capabilities. The hope is that as the Wii advances in the online department, Harmonix will be able to fill the gap that one of Rockband’s most well known features will leave on this system.

Considering the fact that the Wii is the most social and interactive of all the next gen systems out there, bringing a game like Rockband to it’s ranks will surely increase the appeal for the already sold out system. The question is, would you plop down $170 for a game and controllers that may very well never offer more songs to your library or would you go purchase a used Xbox 360 and Rockband for it so you’re not bored with such an expensive game and waiting for the next incarnation of it?

The Rockband music library currently has over 70 songs available for download ranging from $.099-$1.99 each and continues to release more content every week for both Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network.

Tags: , Harmonix, playstation 3, Rockband, wii, xbox 360

OpenOffice 2.4 isn’t even out the door yet and the discussions have already fired up as to what we have to look forward in the next full release. If you’re not familiar with the product, OpenOffice is an open source alternative to Microsoft Office and other solutions that provides cross platform uniformity and essential tools for the average user. Unfortunately, the product doesn’t hold much of a market share and has been left behind due to the XML-based Office 2007 as it can’t read the files without converting and often reformatting their layout.

But OpenOffice 3.0 promises to fix that issue while adding as many of the bells and whistle it can to provide you a similar, if not superior experience to it’s competitors. And don’t forget that it’s free too!

Source: PC World

Tags: Microsoft Office 2007, OpenOffice

Sun Microsystems, through a $44 million contract with the United States Pentagon, has just announce their project to put Silicon Photonics into action. Wires have been bottlenecking technological advancement for year, and although developments like fiber optics have increased the bandwidth that can be achieved using wires, it’s just not cutting it.

Ron Ho, a lead research assigned to this project has stated that the chance of successfully replacing wires with direct laser transmission between chips is only at about 50%. If Silicon Photonics is successfully implemented, you’ll no longer need to buy L.E.D. lights for the inside of your system. We know you still will anyways.

Source: New York Times

Tags: New York Times, Silicon Photonics, Sun Microsystems

In a good faith effort for those of us foolish enough to invest in one side of a format war, Best Buy has announced that anyone who had purchased an HD DVD player from their stores will be receiving a $50 Best Buy gift card. Customers should expect one gift card per system before the 1st of May. If you didn’t purchase your HD DVD player from Best Buy, you can also check here to see what they’ll offer you for the trade in of your now obsolete device.

Other retailers, like Circuit City, have also begun to offer their own sympathy programs as well but aren’t necessarily publicly advertising it.

Tags: Best Buy; $50 Gift Card; HD DVD; HD-DVD; Circuit City

It has now officially been announced and on the market; I am talking about the new NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 single-slot graphics card. The new card from NVIDIA is certain to regain the fastest card in the business (all tests confirm that this card is super fast and it is not just marketing talk from NVIDIA) for the company which lost the lead to ATI not long ago. The new card which will cost you a not so affordable $600 is actually a dual GPU configuration; you can think of it as two 8800 GTXs in SLI mode. According to the official product website, “The dual-GPU engine has 256 screaming fast stream processors and a 1GB framebuffer, allowing it to perform 30 to 50% faster across games than the previous performance leading GeForce 8800 Ultra GPU.” I can’t say that I don’t want on because I really want one. I just have to stop eating for a month so that I can afford it!

Tags: Nvidia, NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2