SlashGear Week in Review - Week 48 2008

It's been a shorter working week what with Thanksgiving on Thursday, and much of the gadget news has been around what offers, bargains and discounts were on offer at cash-strapped retailers. SlashGear has done its bit to ease your present picking pickle, with the 2008 Holiday Gift Guide. We've also had reviews of Sony's VAIO LV and VAIO RT all-in-one PCs; will you be lucky enough to find one of these monster media machines under your tree next month?

Elsewhere, rumors have been ramping up about Microsoft's possible entrance to the consumer cellphone market. According to the latest sources, an NVIDIA Tegra-based device blending Zune media capabilities and Sidekick messaging expertize is already in the offing. Codenamed 'Pink', there's even talk of it making an appearance at CES 2009.

Something else finally hitting the stands at the start of next year is the Garmin nuvifone, the sat-nav company's GPS-heavy touchscreen cellphone. Captivating when we first saw it, many months ago, has delay after delay robbed the nuvifone of its charm? Until then, we'll sate ourselves with the Samsung Omnia SCH-i910, fresh to Verizon and reviewed by our good selves here.

Dell has done its bit to push higher-capacity solid-state storage into buyers' reach, with the arrival of a $100 32GB SSD option on the Inspiron Mini 9 netbook. Meanwhile, Verizon pushed out a BlackBerry Storm OS update that, it's hoped, will begin to change the tide of opinion claiming the touchscreen handset needed a few more trips through quality control before it was fit for public consumption. If you've got a Storm yourself, let us know how you get on with the new firmware.

In other reviews, Sleek Audio's SA6 in-ear headphones only got better with the cord-snipping W-1 Kleer wireless system, while we found that Apple has tweaked the MacBook Air into what could be the finest ultraportable notebook on the market. We also revealed that SlashGear will be one of your fifty chances to win in the HP Magic giveaway: over $6,000 of top tech toys that would put an end to your desperate Christmas shopping.