Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

If you do any kind of computer graphics, animation or design work on a daily basis there’s a good chance you already use a Wacom tablet. But while that Intuos or Cintiq (you lucky bastard) might be ideal for your workstation, their size makes them not so ideal when you’re on the go, working on a laptop, or anywhere with limited space. And it’s those times when Wacom’s more affordable Bamboo line really shines.

Not only does their compact size make them easy to stash in a laptop bag, but they provide similar functionality to their larger counterparts for a lot less money. And they’re the first Wacom tablets that can also be used with your fingers, including multi-touch gestures on a Mac or a PC. As someone who’s used a Wacom tablet pretty much every day for the past 7+ years I was curious how the company’s new Bamboo line stacked up against their more professional models. And if you’re curious too, you can find my full review after the jump.

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By Andrew Liszewski

This morning Elecom released a whole slew of new card readers, and while most of them just seem to feature a new color or slightly more compact design, this particular model, the MR-C20, stands out thanks to its magnetic backing that lets you stick it to a filing cabinet or PC tower instead of having it cluttering up your desk. It’s also available in trendy colors like black, white, fluorescent green and hot pink, but like most readers these days it eschews support for compact flash in order to stay compact.

[ PR - Elecom's New Card Readers ] VIA [ Akihabara News ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The company that introduced the world to the netbook with their EEE is now introducing a system at the other end of the performance spectrum.

The Asus ESC 1000 is essentially a desktop supercomputer with a speed of 1.1 teraflops thanks to a 3.3 GHz Intel LGA1366 Xeon W3580 server processor, 960 cores inside three Nvidia Tesla c1060 graphics processing cards coupled with a Quadro FX5800 GPU. The system also includes 24GB of DDR3 1333 MHz RAM, a 500GB SATA II hard drive and a high-capacity 1100 watt power supply. All for just over $14,500 according to PC Advisor.

[ Softpedia - ASUS Launches Its First Supercomputer, Packed with NVIDIA Graphics ]

By Andrew Liszewski

It might not be as comprehensive, nor is it narrated by Stephen Fry, but Openmoko’s WikiReader could be the closest thing we have to The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy right now. It’s a palm-sized encyclopedia that contains over 3 million English language articles from Wikipedia, available offline.

Thanks to its monochrome touchscreen display that allows you to click on hyperlinks and scroll an article with a finger stroke, the WikiReader will run for months on a set of 2xAAA batteries. And since Wikipedia is constantly being updated, the WikiReader can also be kept up-to-date with quarterly updates that can be downloaded for free from their website, or there’s a $29 yearly subscription plan which provides the updates via microSD cards. $99 available from Amazon today.

[ WikiReader ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Given how easy it is to open your standard beige PC tower case (assuming it’s not locked) I’m pretty sure you don’t want to use this locking drawer that installs into a couple of unused drive bays to protect anything particularly valuable or important.

But if you’re tired of people mooching your blank DVDs, or stealing paperclips, I guess it could serve as a convenient lockbox. Each drawer comes with a couple of horizontal and vertical dividers for compartmentizing it as needed, as well as a CD post that should hold about 24 discs. Just $9.95 from Kleargear.com.

[ PC Drawer and Locking Safe ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The surprise was kind of spoiled last week when someone actually managed to buy one, but today Wacom officially unveiled their new multi-touch friendly Bamboo tablets. They essentially work like a larger version of the MacBook’s already large touchpad, allowing you to use your fingers for multi-touch gestures, as well as the traditional Wacom stylus for drawing and other more precise work.

And while it seems a bit confusing, there are actually now five different products in Wacom’s Bamboo line which each contain different levels of multi-touch vs. stylus functionality at varying price points. At the low-end there’s the Bamboo Touch and the Bamboo Pen which only support multi-touch or the stylus for $69, and on the high-end there’s the Bamboo Fun for $199 which supports all of the aforementioned features and appears to be slightly larger, and only available in silver/grey.

[ Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch ] VIA [ SlashGear ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While SGI will probably never be remembered for their business prowess, there’s no denying they had some nice hardware back in the day. But it looks like the company is back at it with their new Octane III Personal Supercomputer announced yesterday. With a one-by-two-foot form factor and a wall of fans you probably don’t want this thing sitting on your desk, but if you need the computing horsepower you won’t be disappointed to hear that the Octane III can accommodate up to 80-high performance cores and almost 1TB of memory. The system will be available in a wide variety of CPU configurations, and here’s just a few to give you an idea of what kind of processing power we’re talking about:

- Ten dual-socket, Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series-based nodes
- One dual-socket, Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series-based workstation with advanced NVIDIA graphics and/or GP-GPU card support
- Nineteen single-socket, Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 3400 series-based nodes
- Nineteen single-socket, Dual-Core Intel® Atom™ processor-based nodes

The Octane III is available now with Intel Xeon processor 5500 series or Intel Atom configurations and a starting price of $7,995.

[ SGI Octane III Personal Supercomputer ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I absolutely love Logitech’s VX Nano cordless laser mouse for day-to-day work and travel, and recommend it to anyone who asks, but it is a bit on the expensive side and whose to say everyone will find it as comfortable to use as I do. So I also dig this cheaper alternative from Verbatim. The Easy Riser’s most obvious feature is the adjustable height which can be raised for a more comfortable hand posture, or flattened for easy transport. But it also comes with a classy silver and black finish and a programmable scroll wheel.

Best of all it comes in 3 different cost-effective flavors for any budget. A 2.4GHz wireless model with a tiny USB receiver (as tiny as the VX Nano’s) for $39.99, a wireless Bluetooth model for $34.99 and a retractable corded version for just $19.99. Available from Verbatim sometime in October.

[ Verbatim Easy Risers ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Windows IceBox might seem like a strange name for a flash drive, but this USB stick isn’t for storing files, it’s actually used for freezing your hard drive. Well to be more specific, when connected to a computer it can be used to protect a designated partition from harmful or unwanted changes. The PC will function as normal, and will happily allow you to download viruses, malware, or delete important files, but when you shut it down with the IceBox still connected, your system will be restored to its previous healthy state. Anyone who’s ever had to fix a PC after a young’n has used it will appreciate the idea.

But you can also specify certain folders as being ‘open’ which allows you to make changes to them that will be preserved when the system is shut down, even though the partition is frozen. Like a documents folder, or your browser bookmarks where you might not want to lose new additions. Just $18.99 from USBFever.com.

[ USB Windows IceBox ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]