We’re running out of places to hide from the internet, and cars are the latest casualty. Starting next month, Cadillac will offer an option for a dealer installed 3G wireless router in their CTS Sport sedans. You can expect typical 3G download speeds (supposedly 400-800 kbps but your mileage may vary), and if no 3G is available, you’ll be lucky to see 200 kbps. The router itself cost about $500, $450 of which probably gets sunk into that Cadillac logo.
The service is actually being offered through a company called Autonet Mobile. It costs about $30 for 1 gig a month, or about $60 for 5 gigs a month… There doesn’t seem to be any unlimited plan. A gig a month is just about enough for you to check email, download attachments, maybe listen to the occasional song. But personally, I hate having to worry about caps. And with so many mobile devices with unlimited data plans out there, what’s the appeal of having a piece of hardware that’s restricted in bandwidth AND restricted in location? I guess maybe the idea is, if you’re buying a new Cadillac, things like “cost effectiveness” just aren’t that high up on your list of priorities.
When I was little, I decided that when I retired, I’d spend all of my Social Security on a badass model train set. Now that it’s looking increasingly likely that I won’t have any Social Security, I’m just going to have to make due with Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany. It’s the largest model railway in the world, with 900 square meters of exhibit, 700 trains traveling over 9 kilometers of track, 160000 figures, and 250000 lights. By the time it’s finished in 2014, all of those numbers should double. So far, it’s taken 500000 work hours to complete at a cost of nearly $10 million, but you can get it to see it all for just 10 euros next time you’re in Germany.
Spring is finally here, and that means more warm weather and beautiful days outside. It also means people are spending more time out and about with their laptops. So when you’re stumped with an issue on your notebook, just head over to the Laptop Experts site. The other experts and I are still hard at work making sure that no question goes unanswered. Here’s a selection of questions from this past week.
Though we experts are generally on top of things, we don’t mind if you jump in and answer questions too. Ask questions, answer them, it’s all a part of the community. So head on over to the Laptop Experts site and leave us a question or two.
Tired of being completely destroyed by 15-year-olds everytime you try and play a little Halo or Counterstrike online? (The kids still play that right?) Well the reason you suck may not be because you’re too old, but because your hands are not properly conditioned for maximum controller efficiency. And that’s exactly what the Xtensor hand exerciser promises to fix. But if you’re not convinced by those product shots, I’m sure this blurb of medical mumbo-jumbo will sell you on the idea:
The Xtensor is the only product on the market to perform with true biomechanical correctness, able to stimulate muscles and tendons in the hands, wrists and elbows that have been virtually off limits to all other devices. Repetitive gripping and squeezing of your game-controller or mouse forces extended isometric contractions of the flexor muscles of the hands and fingers producing an unnatural imbalance over time as the hands operate in a mostly closed position. For this reason, patients with hand, wrist and elbow disorders experience unnecessarily long healing times and high reoccurrence rates.
And besides making you a better gamer (supposedly) the Xtensor also serves as an effective treatment for tennis elbow and even arthritis pain. All for just $39.99 from ThinkGeek.
A few months ago we brought you the Light Lane concept which attaches to the back of a bike creating a virtual light-up lane on the road’s surface, supposedly making riding at night a bit safer. Well the Contrail is a similar idea, but better suited for daytime rides. The concept was created by Studio Gelardi, and it consists of a small apparatus that applies a thin layer of colored chalk to a bike’s tire. As you ride, the chalk is transferred to the road, leaving a colorful trail behind you. Over time these trails on the road get more pronounced, which not only encourages other bikers to take the same route, but it also lets drivers know what roads are frequented with bike traffic, hopefully making them a bit more cautious.
Didn’t get the response you were hoping for from the last text message you sent? With these Cell Stickies, created by Fiona Carswell, you can just peel off a response, attach it to your cellphone’s screen and see the reply you really wanted. As Fiona puts it, “For people who go to great lengths to see what they want to see…”
They unfortunately don’t appear to be available for purchase, and if they were, the design is obviously only compatible with the iPhone.
Solid State Drives. They’re fast, they’re efficient, they’re durable, they’re sexy, and until recently they’ve been wicked expensive. Unless you’re loaded, you’re still not going to be using them to store all of your illegally downloaded media, but that’s fine, it’s not really what they’re for. Super Talent has come out with a line of UltraDrive SSDs that might just be cheap enough for you to stuff into a netbook, where you don’t really need tons of storage but you do need battery life and shock protection. Or stick in in your desktop and move your OS there to take advantage of the fast read/write speeds.
There are plenty of ways to take advantage of an affordable SSD, and the Super Talent UltraDrive series is just about there… A 2.5″ SATAII 32 gig drive costs $128. You can get 64 gigs for about $200, and the drives top out at 256 gigs for nearly $650. The UltraDrive ME series has read/write speeds of up to 200/160 MB/sec, and should be substantially more efficient when it comes to power consumption. They’re available now from NewEgg.
$128 for a 32 gig SSD still too much for you? How ’bout 30 gigs for $83 shipped? You can get an OCZ drive from NewEgg by clicking here, downloading this rebate form, and using coupon code EMCLPMX37.
Make way for USB 3.0. While USB 2.0 (released 7 years ago) has improved performance tenfold, it hasn’t been close to the speed demon many had hoped. Tweaks to chipset and controller helped boost the effective transfer rate closer to 40MB/s… yet this is still a far cry from 3Gb/s eSATA and FireWire 800. So Intel saw the need for an overhaul of the serial bus standard, and has re-written the aging interface specs to match or surpass the aforementioned competitors. In 2008, the chipzilla went where no USB has gone before: commonly known as SuperSpeed USB, the latest USB 3.0 specs offers 4.8Gb/s theoretical maximum bandwidth; full-duplex data interface; 50% more bus power over the same cable; highly efficient power management for idle devices; better bulk transfer performance; and most importantly, backward compatibility with legacy devices.
Clearly, a lot has changed, and this brings confusion and questions. A new USB 3.0 FAQ posted by Everything USB now attempts to address the most common questions about the more significant upgrades in the entire history of the USB connectivity standard. It discusses how USB 3.0 is able to achieve the things that are listed above. The 2700-word FAQ is written mostly in plain English so you won’t be bombarded by jargon and acronyms.
Related Tags: automotive
Permalink
