The Pulse 2
Back to Contents of Issue: January 2004
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It's the smallest 5-megapixel digital still camera in the world, ladies and gents, at an extraordinary 17.3mm thick. And it's from Sony, which does this sort of thing really, really well. The T1 has a 2.5-inch viewfinder LCD screen in the back which, given the camera's tiny overall dimensions, takes up pretty much the whole of the back of the camera and looks absolutely fantastic -- and produces its images by way of a 5,100,000-pixel "Super HAD" CCD and a 3x optical zoom Carl Zeiss lens. It is, in a word, quality. On the front side, a sliding lens cover sporting the Cybershot brand name subtly etched into it, protects the lens, flash and range finder when in the closed position and even enhances the smart, minimalist design in the open position. Sony has even gone to the lengths of developing a brand new, extra slim rechargeable lithium ion battery to keep the dimensions down, and there's a Memory Stick Duo slot on board for all your storage needs. Suits you to a T. I'd bore you with loads of tech details but there's no point. Buy one immediately.
There has been a whole host of PCs with Microsoft's spanky new Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 announced recently for Japan. I've put the URLs for some of them at the end of this piece but will focus on the one from Hitachi for now -- mostly because our esteemed leader and publisher may well be reading this and feeling generous and well disposed to my humble groveling. Or not. Anyway, Hitachi's 770G20TVP2 is part of the company's "Prius Deck" series, with the stunning eye-catching feature of a HUGE 20-inch, WXGA (1,280 x 768) LCD display (one of the elements that makes this the sexiest Media Center offering of recent memory, I reckon).
Japan's clearly gone a bit wireless-mad recently. The REX-Link1 is a 2.4GHz digital wireless USB audio transmitter, working with almost all the new Windows operating systems and newer Macs. It transmits across a space of up to 10 meters. All you have to do is whack the little USB transmitter thingy into the slot in your computer, and it'll zing over the music goodness from said computer to the color-matched (ideal if your name is Santa Claus) receiver unit. The receiver unit, in turn, connects to whatever kit you want to use to output the audio: 5.1 home theater speaker setups (it's compatible with Dolby Digital 5.1), a combi system, whatever you set your sounds on.
The bizarrely named "Z'Qun" is a USB-IrDA adapter in USB key form. For those of you who don't speak Geek, in English that means it's a little widget that will allow owners to zap, as if by magic, the photos they take on their camera-equipped mobile phones over to their PCs in wireless fashion. The mobile phones it will work with are legion -- I'd write the list down here but if you're reading this at work and work entails operating heavy machinery, you may fall asleep and cause a nasty accident. Basically, if you have one by NTT DoCoMo and its model number has a D, N, F or P in it, you should be all set -- and it'll even run on Vodafone's J-SH53 and J-N51 models.
The charmingly monikered PCVA-HVP20 is a very sleek-looking portable video player with a 20GB internal hard drive. To get the most out of it, Sony says, you'll need a Vaio laptop (also, coincidentally, made by Sony) running Windows ME, XP or 2000. But then they would require that, eh?
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1 NZD = 90.60 JPY
1 AUD = 100.66 JPY
1 EUR = 162.49 JPY
1 GBP = 195.25 JPY
11/21/24 20:22 JST