GadgetReview

Way back in the depths of 2005, we talked about a kind of ultra portable scanner called the Docupen.  Well, the company that makes these has just released a brand new kind that they’re hoping will be so extreme you’ll likely ignore the mostly pointlessness of the device and buy several.  It’s the Docupen X-Series, and the X is almost certainly for X-treeeeeeme.

The Docupen is essentially a scanner the size of a standard ballpoint pen, and allows you to scan a document or a photo into JPEG format by rolling the scanner part along the surface of the thing you want scanned.  It has 64 gigs of internal memory, microSD card compatibility, and can scan to 600 dpi, which is no mean feat for a pen-sized scanner.

If you do a lot of photo manipulation or deal with a lot of actual paper documents–like, say, business cards at trade shows–then you might feel pretty good about the Docupen X-Series.  But you likely won’t feel good about its price, a whopping $369.

Chances are you’ll almost never need to use this, and chances are even greater that you’ll lose it in short order anyway, so it’s probably not what you’d call a good investment.

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Coming to you today from the folks at fu-bi is the Retro Cube Mini Speaker With MP3 Player.

Basically, it’s pretty much what it says on the box.  It’s a speaker that hooks to your iPod or your PC, with either a headphone jack or a USB cable, and will give you about three hours of music for roughly every hour spent charging the battery.  You can also fill up a USB stick, MMC card or SD / SDHC card with music and play them directly from the speaker itself.

It looks like nothing so much as a old fashioned guitar amp, and this is probably where the “Retro” part comes into play.  They sell for about fifty bucks each, but only can be had in Japan for right now.  It’s kind of a nifty idea, but it’s a little bit short on execution.  I mean, great, congratulations. It’s a speaker.  I’ve got several.  But I like that it can be taken anywhere and will play music from outside media, turning it into a pocket stereo.  It’s the kind of thing I could’ve used back when I was in high school.

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So remember just yesterday, when I was getting all poingy happy about the half e-reader / half netbook hybrid?  Well, I think I may have just beat that level of awesome but in a totally different direction.  Today I’m talking about the Kohjinsha PA, a combination netbook and tablet PC.

No, seriously–this sucker has a 4.8″ WSVGA touchscreen, 1.33GHz Atom CPU, 512 meg of RAM and a 32 GB SDD.  The battery is slated to run for 7.5 hours, and it even comes with an SD slot and a 1.3 MP webcam, all in a netsurfing portable tablet PC.

I am profoundly impressed by this, even though my chances of ever using such a device are so slim as to approach zero.  I draw like a cat with a pen in its mouth after ingesting large quantities of peyote, so a tablet PC to me is almost less than useless. But still, I’m impressed–and the price is pretty impressive too.

If you want one of these bad boys, you’ll have to shell out a whopping $758 in Japan.  Preorders are going on, and the prices range between $867 and $921.

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While the mass adoption of USB 3.0 is currently a long, dark and lonely road, a few storage companies have come forth with details regarding their impending drives that boast such compatibility.

Coming December 11th (of this year) Dane-elec’s line of USB 3.0 compatible hard drives, called Superspeed, will be available for purchase starting at $149.99.  Course at that price you’ll be scoring just 500GB of storage, but drop another $100 (or so) and you’ll quadruple your storage capacity.  Throw a bit more cash around and you’ll get your hands on an SSD version, which of course will maximize the drive’s USB 3.0 abilities of 250mbps.  …Continue reading: Dane-elec Announces USB 3.0 Hard Drives, Superspeed SO

Sometimes, you wish you could get access to shaky, variable quality information about just about any topic.  it’s times like these that we usually turn to the internet–but what if we’re away from the wireless internet or what have you?

That’s where the WikiReader device comes in.  It’s powered by two AAA batteries that are estimated to last a full year in this device, and comes with a monochrome touchscreen so you can scroll and track things.

I admit, it’s probably pretty cool to have access to three million articles worth of Wikipedia, especially wherever you happen to be at the time.  Updates are delivered on a quarterly basis, and you can also get a microSD card option added to your WikiReader for just an extra $29 a year.  It will probably do horrible things to barroom trivia contests–NTN is probably freaking out and wetting itself as we speak–but the idea is still plenty cool.

The base unit itself costs $99, and will be available on Amazon on the order of Real Soon Now.

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Thanko doesn’t exactly have a good record when it comes to their gadgets, folks, but here’s an exciting piece of news–apparently their MP4 viewer is coming to be regarded as a solid buy!

Now that’s exciting enough as it is–it’s almost like saying “Man, this fried cockroach tastes delicious!”–but not only will this little item, the DIGITAL MP4 AudioPlayer AV, play your MP4 videos, but it also serves as a digital camera.  It has 8GB of onboard memory, with miniSD cards fully supported, even if they only work with Microsoft XP and Microsoft Vista.

Moreover, it also includes a 4.3-inch screen, a mini remote, two mini speakers and an estimated battery life of four to six hours, making this one of the most portable media viewers ever.  Thanko is already selling this device to Japanese customers–word is that the English store will be selling it soon, in case you want to take the chance that this is Thanko’s best product ever.

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It’s not too often that the computer’s components cost more than the machine, that is until you set out to purchase a 1TB solid state drive.  OCZ’s 1TB Colossus costs a whopping $2,500 and is set to ship sometime in mid August.  It accomplishes maximum read speeds of 250MB/s and write speeds of 200MB/s, and since it’s actually 2 SSD it rocks a RAID 0 configuration.  At 400g, which is about .9lbs, it sure is a beast.

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Flash drives, thumb drives – whatever you wanna call them have become so ubiquitous they’re now stuffed inside of pens, gift bags and just about anywhere they’ll go.  The only problem is that you need a computer to share their contents.

The Leyio is the industry’s first flash drive that utilizes UWB, better known as Ultra Wide Band to exchange its stored contents.  Just stand within short range of another Leyio and you’ll be able to transfer files up to 10Mbps.  Integrated into the base of the drive is a 2GB flash drive for pulling contents off computers or for sharing files with non Leyio devices.  To insure the utmost in security the Leyio features a fingerprint scanner that also doubles as navigation touch pad and battery life on a single charge is a reported 1 month.

I love the idea and seriously applaud its maker, but my gut tells me that the Leyio will not succeed.  Not because it costs $230, but because UWB has yet to be integrated into really any devices and with the launch of Bluetooth 3.0, which promises high speed transfers riding on the WiFi spectrum, it’s sure to supplant any possibility of UWB going, well, wide spread.

The 16GB Leyio is currently only available in the UK, you can find it on Amazon.

Specs:

• 16GB Personal Sharing Device
• 1.5″ OLED Screen to view your data
• Data Transfer between devices with UWB at 10Mb/Sec
• Mini USB for Charging and Loading Data
• USB 2.0 Port for transferring data to/from any USB Key
• Built in USB Shuttle (2GB)
• Finger Print reader for security.