Oh! Gizmo

By David Ponce

October 22nd is just around the corner and with it the launch of Windows 7. Retarded promotional videos aside, this OS has a few people excited as it might actually not suck. So if you’re thinking of buying a new PC running the new OS but are afraid you’ll have to painstakingly transfer all “user accounts, Windows settings, files and folders, pictures and photos, MP3s and other music, videos, program settings and program data, and e-mail messages, settings, and contacts” to the new PC, Belkin’s got you covered with this Easy Transfer Cable. Designed to work with Windows 7’s Easy Transfer utility, it’ll simply automate the entire process. Plug one end to the old PC, another to the new and run the included software.

Once the transfer done, a post migration report is generated, which gives you a comprehensive view of everything that was transferred. Because of possible incompatibility issues, programs and applications are not transferred to the new computer. Instead, the utility provides a list of all the programs and applications that were installed on the old PC along with links to the latest versions of the programs if they are provided by the software developer.

The cable is about $33 and available in North America starting October 23rd. Q1 in Europe and Asia.

[ Amazon Product Page ] VIA [ Gizmag ]

By David Ponce

Albeit slowly, things are starting to shake up a little bit for SupoerSpeed USB 3.0. The technology we talked about twice before is a vast improvement over USB 2.0 in terms of speed, which increases tenfold to a theoretical 4.8Gbit/s. While there aren’t many consumer electronics around that take advantage of the new specification, Point Grey will be showing off at IDF next week a webcam with a 3MP Sony IMX036 CMOS sensor that will allow it to unload 1080p uncompressed video footage at 60fps. This transfers processing duties to the PC and allows for better facial recognition capabilities, among other presumably good things to come out of the use of this higher bandwidth.

No idea on price or availability on this yet, but like all things new, it’s probably better to not even ask.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Xataka ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Did you ever have a teacher or parent that always yelled at you for slouching? Well as annoying as that person may have been, they were probably right in doing so. Poor posture can lead to back and neck issues later in life, which no one wants to deal with. Since it’s hard to remember not to do it and you can’t have someone nagging at you all day, here’s a device that can alert you instead.

The USB Posture Alert Reminder uses ultrasonic sensors to detect just how close you are to your computer. This allows it to see when you’re slouching so that it can alert you accordingly. Alerts can come in the way of red and blue LEDs, or even a chime when you start to slouch. If posture is important, this $24 USB gadget might just be worth the cash.

[ SourcingMap ]VIA [ UberGizmo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Yep, for just $24.95 from Vat19 you can split a single USB 2.0 port on your PC into 4 ports using this retro cassette tape USB hub. Unfortunately like real cassettes, flipping it over doesn’t give you an additional 4 more USB ports, so why would you opt for something like this? As one of the commenters on BBGadgets points out, it’s all explained in the FAQ:

Question: How is this different than a regular (boring) USB Hub?

Answer: The Cassette Tape USB Hub looks like a cassette tape. So, it’s awesome and not boring.

Can’t argue with that.

[ Cassette Tape 4-port USB 2.0 Hub ] VIA [ CrunchGear & BBGadgets ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Have you been pining over that USB 3.0-equipped Asus motherboard that we showed you last week? Sure, there aren’t any peripherals that actually take advantage of the new standard, but at least you’d be prepared. At the time Asus hadn’t provided us with any pricing or availability on the board, however, now we know exactly when this baby will be shipping. That would be never.

Apparently Asus has decided to scrap the board, without really giving any reason. The only thing they mentioned was that they were working on other things. I guess maybe it is a little early to get excited about USB 3.0, but you can’t use peripherals without ports. Then again, what good are ports without peripherals? Now we’re back to the old chicken and the egg thing.

[ Tom's Hardware ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Have you ever needed to recharge your phone, or other USB gadget and wish that you could just use the USB ports on your laptop to do the trick? Sure, if you happen to be using the laptop at the time, you can plug it in, no problem. But what if you don’t want to mess with powering it on, simply to get a little juice for your phone? Well one enterprising modder decided to come up with his own solution. It’s not quite as simple as plugging into an available USB port, but it gets the job done.

This guy decided to take out the battery from his MSI Wind netbook and install a USB port directly onto it. The port is no good for data (obviously), but it allows his to plug in his iPhone and get a couple of charges off it. The best part is that he can still use the battery as normal with his netbook. Unfortunately he does have to remove the battery pack to charge his phone, which can be a bit of an inconvenience. Still very cool. This is definitely something we need to see on more laptops. I recall Toshiba having a few notebooks that charged gadgets while asleep, but I’d really like to see this sort of thing become a standard feature.

[ Prusadjs ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Anyone here remember switching over from USB 1.1 to 2.0? The difference in speed was like going from dial-up to T1. Well we’re finally approaching that kind of change again with USB 3.0. We’ve been hearing about this new standard for years, but until now there hasn’t been a single device that supports it. Well someone had to come first, and that someone is ASUS.

If you’ve ever wondered which came first, the port or the peripheral, the answer is apparently the port. Asus has been working on their new P6X58 Premium motherboard, which will feature a pair of USB 3.0 ports. You’ll also have support for the latest i7 CPUs, six DDR3 slots and three PCI-Express 2.0 slots. No word on when it’ll be hitting the market, or how much of a premium it’ll fetch for the USB 3.0.

[ Xfastest ] VIA [ UberReview ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Cables are so 1920! But for some reason we’ve yet to been able to completely rid ourselves of those tangled burdens. Thankfully there’s devices like the new HDAiR from Altona Technologies that are helping us cut those cords one by one. It’s a wireless USB display adapter that lets you connect a USB-equipped PC or laptop to a Hi-def display or projector via HDMI or VGA. The HDAiR has a usable range of about 30 feet (it doesn’t require a line of site) and over that distance you can push an image with a resolution of 720P or 1440×1200. $199 available now on the Altona website.

[ Altona HDAiR ]

By Evan Ackerman

A NAS (network attached storage) drive is quite a handy thing to have on your home network. You can stuff it back behind your router (assuming it’s not a part of your router, that is) and forget about it, except that it’ll always be available to any computer on your network… It’s an easy way to add flexible storage for things like media that multiple people want to share. Or, it should be an easy way, but it often turns out to be expensive and troublesome.

This little box from Hitachi is called SimpleNet, and it’s able to turn any external USB drive into a NAS drive. From the look of things, you plug your router into one and a USB drive into the other, and that’s it. $80 might be a tad steep for this convenience, but there’s a lot of possibilities with this little device, and it gives you the flexibility to hot swap as many USB drives as you like. I haven’t run the numbers on this, but my guess is that you’ll probably save money (and headaches) if you get SimpleNet and some regular dirt cheap external USB drives, as opposed to a couple external drives designed with integrated ethernet ports. Yes, you’re going to take a speed hit with the 10/100 ethernet port (plus the USB) on the SimpleNet, but I bet it’ll work great for backups and light media access.

The Hitachi SimpleNet USB NAS adapter should be available now(ish) in retail stores.

[ Press Release ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]