GW-110

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J@pan Inc Magazine Presents:
G A D G E T W A T C H
The Hottest Gadgets and Gizmos from Japan
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Issue No. 110
Thursday, July 31, 2003
(Long URLs may break across two lines, so copy to your browser.)

Name: Maxell DP-101B
Category: PC peripherals
Price: TBA
Release date in Japan: August

The Gist: Maxell's DP-101B is a Bluetooth "digital pen," which the
company intends to start supplying on an OEM basis from August. When
you use the pen to write on the special paper tablet supplied, the
digital pen sensors track the movement over the minute dots printed on
the digital paper and beam what you're writing directly across to a PC
in real time. Apparently, the digital pen is designed for use in the
administrative and financial business sectors and, I'm sure, will
prove absolutely invaluable for those nerdy, mathematical types.
Darned if I know why. Although I guess you could always copy the boss'
signature and then have it in digital form on your computer for
signing off expenses and stuff. You know, that's just off the top of
my head, although I'm sure there are much better uses for it, also
possibly less illegal.

The DP-101B is compatible with USB 2.0 and the polymer lithium ion
battery allows two hours of continuous use with 10 hours standby time.

More info: http://www.maxell.co.jp/company/news/2003/030722.html

======================= SPECIAL AUTOMOBILE ===========================
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For more information please contact:
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Name: Casio QV-R40
Category: Digital cameras
Price: Open (but approx 40,000 yen)
Release date in Japan: August 7, 2003

The Gist: This is a digicam for the impatient. If you get into a rage
waiting for the toast to pop up or think three minutes is too long to
be boiling an egg, then this is the camera for you. Following on from
the company's QV-R4, the R40 boasts the same "shutter release lag" of
0.01 seconds, but its piece de resistance is the 1-second boot up
time. And if you're still worried about losing precious seconds
fiddling with the camera's other functions, be assured that the button
response time has been improved across the board to initiate power on
and off, recording and playback. Owners will be able to get max
resolutions shots of 2,304x1,712 (that's bigger than my house) and 30
seconds' worth of movies at a stuttering 15 frames per second.

The QV-R40 has a 3-times optical zoom, F stops from 2.8 to 4.9, focal
range equivalent to 39-117mm on a 35mm camera and range of 60cm to
infinity (plus a macro mode for 10-70cm). The camera records to SD
memory card, has 10MB of onboard Flash RAM and is compatible with
Seiko-Epson's "Direct Print"-capable printers.

More info: http://www.casio.co.jp/QV/Info/qv_r40/

Name: IBM ThinkPad T40p
Category: PCs
Price: 479,000 yen
Release date in Japan: July 25, 2003

The Gist: This laptop beats my recently purchased (goddamn it, goddamn
it!) desktop PC hands down. If you consider yourself a power user and
this digital behemoth isn't enough for you, you're not a power user,
you're a computing megalomaniac freak boy.

Potential new owners can configure IBM's amazing new portable any
which way but if you wanna go totally crazy, you can get one that has
a Mobile Pentium 1.60GHz CPU (with an Intel 855PM chipset), 1GB of DDR
SDRAM, a 60-gig, 7,200rpm hard disk, a DVD/CD-RW combo drive, a 64MB
ATI MOBILITY Fire GL 9000 video card displaying on a 14.1-inch SXGA
(1,400x1,050) LCD monitor and runs on Windows XP Professional.

Of course if all that makes sense to you, you're going to want to know
what's on offer round the backside of the machine, so here we go. It
has IEEE 802.11a/b, Bluetooth and Gigabit Ethernet ports, two Type II
PC card slots, two USB 2.0, one parallel, one S-Video and one D-Sub15
port. Closed up and ready to travel, it does weigh a slightly hefty
2.42kg, but then that's probably down to the high-capacity,
longer-life battery that'll run for a huge seven hours without a
recharge.

More info: http://www-6.ibm.com/jp/NewsDB.nsf/2003/07251

Name: NHJ Japan D'zign
Category: Digital camcorders
Price: Open (but approx 29,800 yen)
Release date in Japan: Early August 2003

The Gist: NHJ's D'zign is an astonishingly cheap 1,920,000-pixel
MPEG-4 digital camcorder. With an SD memory card slot and 4-times
digital (yeuch!) zoom, the D'zign can take 640x480-dot movies at a
faltering 15 frames per second, but if you want to get anything other
than your granpappy's stroll across the garden down on film, you'll
need to go to the lower resolutions. Switching to 320x240 will speed
the frame rate up to 20 per second but, bizarrely going all the way
down to 160x120 will have -- wait for it -- absolutely no effect at
all! Except that everything will look like you're on the bottom of a
swimming pool looking up!

If you go for still images, you can, however, squeeze 1,600x1,200
pictures out of the D'zign. It'll work with pretty much any Windows
system and the new Mac OS, the battery should last for 90 minutes and,
did we mention it's unbelievably cheap for a camcorder? You can even
choose between silver or black body finishes. Can't go wrong.

More info: http://www.nhjapan.com/

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Subscribers: 3,939 as of July 31, 2003

STAFF
Written by: Max Everingham (max@everingham.net)
Edited by: J@pan Inc editors (editors@japaninc.com)

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