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As expected, HP and Vodafone Ireland have announced a deal for built-in 3G sim cards in HP's laptops. The feature will be available on any HP laptop, subject to the buyer signing up to a 'business plan' contract with Vodafone, details of which aren't yet available. Dell and Lenovo have already entered into similar arrangements with Vodafone.
Want to beat the summer festival beer-stall monopolies? The synthetic beer belly is now available from gadget webstore Firebox.co.uk. The device holds four pints of liquid with an elongated straw. The designers anticipate demand at sporting matches, concert festivals and other occasions with controlled supplies of alcohol. It costs €43.20 plus postage.
Channel 4 is now selling episodes of Lost for 99p (about €1.45) each. All 25 first season episodes are there and the first two episodes are free. But only our Northern cousins will apparently benefit for now -- Channel 4 is restricting downloads to within the 'UK'. Windows only, too. It's available at www.channel4.com/lost.
Looking for cash for your scrapped e-voting machine? A number of online merchants are only too happy to relieve you of your burdensome democratic detritus for hard cash!
Irish Broadband will soon launch a wireless Ripwave broadband datacard for laptops. It intends this to be a precursor to full Wimax, which it has signed up for with Intel. The Ripwave card product slots into a laptop in the same way as one of the mobile operators' datacards. It connects to Irish Broadband's Ripwave network. No pricing details yet.
Mac laptop users are on sales alert over the coming months. The reason is that with Apple moving its laptop range over to Intel chips, it will soon start to discount the older ranges to clear them out. €250 off one of the current laptops could be good value, seeing as many experts aren't convinced that the new Intel range is quite ready to work with everything yet. Current price range is here (with US prices here).
I wonder who buys and uses gaming laptops in Ireland? I've never met anyone who owns one, maybe because they're expensive, heavy monsters. Then again, I'm over 30. But Dell, which recently bought gaming computer specialist Alienware, must be selling them to someone. Its latest is a 4kg behemoth, with a steroids-induced 4GB (667MHz) DDR2 capacity, 17 inch WUXGA screen and 9 cell battery. I haven't seen the machine yet, but Slashdot contributors are dubious on the value of its dual-core (2.16GHz) chip. It costs a bare minimum of €1,900 (which in Dell-speak probably means €2,200 with essential 'optional' extras). The real question is whether the kids will want to be seen with Dell's circular badge as opposed to one of those spiffy-looking Alienware models...
Sony Ireland has launched a mouse that turns into a mobile-style VOIP handset. The VN-CX1 (why can't they come up with catchier names for these things?) connects to a computer via USB. A little light on the top of the mouse lights up when someone calls, while its centre scroll wheel acts as a volume control. Pretty nifty, really.
€80 from Sony Centres around Ireland.
Researching a feature on MP3 players, a colleague asked a simple question: is a computer always necessary to get music onto an MP3 player? I had barely thought about it. The answer, though, is no. Creative's Zen Nano Plus (50 songs), for example, can record music directly onto it from a CD player.
I've been using Lenovo's first own-brand laptop, the 3000 C100. The 1.5GHz, 512MB Ram model I've had has a Celeron chip and is a budget model, priced at €750 (including Vat). Overall, I give it 6.5 out of 10. In summary:
The Good The Bad
4-in-1 card reader Heavy (almost 3kg)
Good battery life (5 hours) Ugly (looks like a budget Dell)
Budget XGA screen
A little slow dealing with some applications
Underpowered for upcoming Windows Vista
