Let’s talk mail. No, not email, nothing so throwaway. I’m talking letters – proper letters, delivered to your postbox and preferably handwritten with a proper ink pen. Letters like that deserve some ceremony in their opening, and thankfully here’s just the letter opener for the task. Purisme’s carbon-fiber letter opener, designed by Mario Zeppetzauer, is a luxury slice of award-winning (and expensive) envelope-slicer, and the guys at Yanko Design have been playing with it.
ASUS might be expecting 22-percent of their 2009 sales to come from netbooks, but that doesn’t mean the company has forgotten about its mainstream notebook line. In fact, they still expect to ship more than twice that amount of notebook computers, 47-percent of total shipments, and it’ll be made up of slick new machines like the rumored 12-inch ZX-series. Believed to fit in above the 10.2-inch ASUS Eee PC S101, the ZX-series will have comparable industrial design and super-skinny chassis, with a 16:10 aspect display and “similar functionality”.
Wow. This thing is fancy. But fancy isn’t necessarily the be all and end all of technology. Take this latest creation from Ego Lifestyle. It sure is fancy, but it lacks the guts to be a real competitor. Not that it’s trying to compete in the standard laptop market or anything.
I’m not sure what’s best about this Whac-a-Mole cabinet: the fact that it’s hidden inside an innocent looking bookcase and opens at the press of a remote button, or the fact that you can have personalized mole-heads made to resemble your family, co-workers or favorite politicians. Comprising five moles that randomly pop up, two soft leather mallets to batter them with, and an LED display to keep track of your score, there’s also a drinks shelf and glass-rack above to calm you down after a particularly frantic session.
Some gadgets just scream luxury, and this latest offering from Super Talent is definitely in loud voice. This limited edition 18-Carat Gold USB Drive is made from solid gold and while it does provide Flash storage, it also makes a sophisticated statement.
Who doesn’t love a total luxury gadget once in awhile? And dedicated gamers, especially those with a fondness for all things retro, will no doubt fall in love with SurfaceTension’s latest Arcade Coffee Table.
The ASUS S101 luxury netbook will launch in the US on November 1st, priced at $699. That’s the latest news on the hotly-anticipated high-end Eee PC, which eschews the usual netbook frugality to instead offer basic internet, email and general connectivity in a super-portable package. Your $699 gets you a 0.75-inch thick chassis in “copper brown” or “graphite”, both with chromed accents, while under the hood it’s the usual 1.6GHz Atom and 1GB of RAM.
The ASUS S101 is, despite being neither budget netbook nor all-capable ultraportable notebook, a source of constant obsession to many, and the company have now made it easier to see [via] whether you’ll be able to actually buy one or merely admire from afar. At the moment it’s all very Europe and Asia weighted, so to tide you over UMPC Fever have a full set of S101 unboxing photos.
I’m all for luxury items, but some things border on ridiculous. And in this bad economy, it’s even more disheartening to see things you could never possibly afford. But that won’t stop me from writing about it!
In fact, check out the CineWall CW-95HD from Runco. This in-wall projection system utilizes the look of a flat screen TV, with the quality of front projection. It’s hard to go wrong with that sort of combination.
Since vinyl purists are such, well, purists, it comes as no surprise that they favor different needle cartridges depending on the type of music they’re listening to. No problem if you only play, say, jazz, but if you’re also partial to some reggae, string quartet and classic ABBA, that’s a whole lot of switching and tweaking each time. New York audio pros High Water Sound may have the answer: a modified TW-Acoustic Raven AC turntable with four separate, independent arms and cartridges.
SlashGear Japan
