Filed under: Laptops
Students in California’s Fresno Unified school district have a little something to be excited about this week, as officials have just invested $650,000 in 1,000 Asus Eee PCs, set for classroom deployment over the next few weeks. The concept is to use the miniscule laptops alongside good, old-fashioned textbooks, with each student being given the chance to create a “digital portfolio” of essays, drawings, and whatever else they can get away with. The computers will remain in roughly 60 classrooms, and will be shared by students — but some worry they’ll hinder the learning process by distracting pupils. Says Stephen Lewis, a geology professor at California State University, Fresno, “Teaching and learning is a person-to-person business. Are we moving toward a remote-control classroom?” We’re not sure what he means by that… then again, we drifted off half-way through his statement to watch a video of that dog on a skateboard.
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Filed under: Storage
Those disappointed by the character selection in Mimoco’s
original lineup of Star Wars-themed flash drives will soon have a few more familiar, if somewhat distorted, faces choose from, as the company has just announced its second series of drives. Included this time around are Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and perennial geek favorite, Boba Fett. Each are also available in the same 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB varieties as before, but they’re a bit cheaper this time around, running $50, $70, and $110, respectively. Just don’t plan on doling out these this holiday season, as they won’t start shipping until January or February.
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
We’ve definitely seen some questionable designs from Ramos (and some straight-up KIRFs as well), but it appears as though the company’s latest PMP, the RM970, might have actually been drawn up by someone living in this decade. The 2GB device features a 3-inch, 480 x 272 screen, a 200MHz ARM7 processor backed up by a 200MHz Rockchips DSP, and an iPod-aping split-screen menu system. Those dual 200MHz chips enable some pretty decent format support — the RM970 supports MP3, WAV, WMA, Ogg, FLAC, AAC, APE, MPEG4, Real and AVI out of the box, and it appears that NES emulation will also be included. Of course, there’s no word on price or availability outside of Asia, but here’s hoping Ramos keeps its standards this high in the future.
[Via MP4 Users]
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Filed under: Digital Cameras
While its smile-detection feature alone may be enough to entice some buyers, the folks at PhotographyBLOG decided to dig a little deeper into Olympus’ new
FE-300, and they’ve now churned out a full review of the camera. That feature aside, however, it seems that the camera is a decidedly unimpressive affair, with it boasting some decent specs on paper that unfortunately don’t all add up to a top-notch camera. On the upside, the camera is apparently easy to use for novices, and it’s said to be “reasonably swift” in operation, but its overall image quality seems to leave quite a bit to be desired. As is often the case, things get particularly bad when you start to move up the ISO settings, with camera shake posing some problems as well. So, unless you’re really having trouble capturing the slightest of smiles on your subjects, it seems that you can likely do better elsewhere.
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Filed under: Home Entertainment
While the idea of DIY speakers may not strike most folks as the type of thing they’d want to show off in their living room, the so-called “Sphericals” project from Parts Express puts as much emphasis on form as on function, and should at least appeal to those with more adventuresome taste. For the latter part of the equation, Parts Express relied on standard off-the-shelf components (which they’ll gladly sell you), but for the former, they pulled parts from wherever they could get ‘em, including steel tubing, some candle-making molds, and even the odd frying pan. Audiophiles will likely want to steer clear, however, as Parts Express only describes the speakers’ sound as “pretty good,” but the rest of you up for a challenge can find all the information you need to build your own by hitting up the read link below.
[Via Audio Junkies]
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
