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Geek gadgetry Palmtops, Clik! drives, vinyl killers and more... by MICHAEL CITROME Diamond Rio PMP300 At a size smaller than an audiocassette and weighing in at only 70 grams, Diamond Multimedia's Rio has impressive stats for a portable radio. The Rio, however, is not a radio, but a portable MP3 player, capable of CD-quality sound and small enough to fit in the breast pocket of your shirt. Relying on the MP3 standard for audio, a format widely used on the Internet, the Rio plays back music that has been compressed 12:1 from the original source, with no loss of quality. By storing the music in flash memory, the Rio has no moving parts, allowing it to operate for up to 12 hours on a single AA battery. The 32 megabytes of built-in memory stores about an hour of audio, but optional 16 megabyte cards are available which give the Rio virtually unlimited storage capacity. By connecting to your computer, any MP3 can be transferred to the Rio, and the package includes software to convert any CD to MP3. Using the unit's front panel controls, you can skip back and forth between tracks like a CD player, and adjust the equalizer settings. All this makes mix tapes look pretty much obsolete. Rio, $399 2 16 Mb Flash cards, $140 Diamond Multimedia: http://www.diamondmm.com/rio Nikon Coolpix 700 Digital Camera and Iomega Clik! Drive for Digital Cameras With these two products, you can take a trip to Europe, take a few hundred photos and never worry about film. The Coolpix 700 is Nikon's latest entry in the consumer digital camera market. The replacement of the popular Coolpix 600, the CP 700 features many improvements over its predecessor. The CP 700's resolution is more than double that of the 600, and features several new image modes. Besides the 2.11-megapixel resolution, the 700 also features a 5mm Nikor lens, a 5 step digital zoom, and a sharp 1.8 colour LCD, which makes choosing images, as well as shooting them, almost idiot-proof. The 700 is also the first pocket-size digital camera to be compatible with optional lenses, such as a wide-angle lens considered the best in its category. The camera also comes with an 8 megabyte Compactflash memory card, which stores about 30 high-resolution images. That's all fine and good, but what do you do when your camera is full of pictures and there's no computer in sight? The answer is simple, the Iomega Clik! Drive. Developed by Iomega, creators of the industry standard Zip disk, Clik! disks are tiny, 2" square in fact, and hold 40 Mb of data each. With a price per meg less than a tenth of that of flash memory, Clik! is far more economical than buying a bunch of flash cards. The Clik! Drive for Digital Cameras includes a Clik! Mobile drive, a flash card reader and a rechargeable battery pack. The package also includes a docking station and cables to connect your drive to your computer when you eventually get home. So once your camera is full, all you have to do is take out the card, slip it into the Clik! card reader, and wait a few minutes. Plus, since it's all digital, you can delete the shots of things that got in your way, such as your thumb, oblivious tourists and border guards. Coolpix 700, about $900 Clik! Drive for Digital Cameras, about $320 10 Pack of Clik! disks, $140 Nikon USA: http://www.nikonusa.com/ Iomega: http://www.iomega.com/ 3Com Palm V Connected Organizer Keeping track of your daily tasks can be an exercise in frustration for the poorly organized. 3Com's fourth generation palmtop, the Palm V, aims to help the order-deprived by presenting them with a small, light pen-based personal organizer with some rather brilliant features. Building on the legacy of the phenomenal PalmPilot and Palm III organizers, the Palm V expands in the realms of battery life, memory capacity, and connectivity. After an initial battery charge of three hours, the Palm V can operate for up to a month at normal usage, an amazing figure considering the ephemeral battery life of its competition, big Windows CE-based machines. The memory capacity is also considerable, with two megabytes on-board, and a flash memory port. Although 2 Mb seems small, it can hold 6,000 addresses, 3,000 appointments, 1,500 to-do items and about 200 e-mail messages. Not bad for a unit that weighs less than four ounces. The Palm V also has an improved infrared communications system, which allows it to communicate without wires with any IR-equipped printer or computer, as well as communicate with other Palm organizers. With a big, bright backlit display and a striking anodized aluminum case, the Palm V is sure to turn heads anywhere that geeks and computer-types congregate. 3Com Palm V, about $600 Palm V Modem (PCS Compatible), about $220 Palm Computing: http://www.palm.com/ Vacuum Records Portable Record Player VP96 There are those in the digital revolution who put down the vinyl LP, who consider it regressive and irrelevant. However, those who understand audio realize that it's much more difficult to design a turntable than it is to design a CD player. It seems that the Japanese are leading the way in the field of creative turntable design, and Vacuum Records' VP96 Portable Record Player is a fine example. This turntable may look like a toy, with its co-lourful '60s look and lunchbox design, but this baby has stereo sound and an Audio-technica stylus, not to mention pitch control. Phonographs like this haven't been sold in North America for years, so if you want one, you'll have to mail order it from Japan. Vacuum Records also sells the Vinyl Killer, a battery powered Volkswagen bus with a stylus and speaker built into it. It plays the record as it drives around its circumference. It will also eventually destroy the record, but that's part of the fun. There's even a special Shonen Knife model. Vacuum also sells a variety of portable crossfaders designed to work with its portable turntables, but you'll have to e-mail them for pricing and availability. VP 96 Portable Record Player, about $140 Vinyl Killer, about $120 Vacuum Records, http://osk.threewebnet.or.jp/~vacuum05/ |