Portable Splash

Over in Berlin right now the IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung in case you were wondering) Consumer Electronics trade fair is in full swing. Amongst all the many products that are on show Harmon/Kardon's new Go and Play iPod boombox has certainly caught our eyes.

Up until now the best portable iPod speakers are the Apple iPod Speaker and the iBoom. The latter is a bit on the ugly side and its performance isn't exactly earth shattering, the former is let down by the positioning of the iPod so as it's liable to fall out when moved. In contrast Harmon's Go and Play has the iPod fit in snugly on its back which should keep the whole thing nice and secure and, with the company's excellent reputation for audio quality, it shouldn't sound to bad either.

As well as a striking black body and stainless steel detail the Go and Play also packs bi-amped digital amplification, digital sound processing and ridge and Atlas transducers so it's safe to say our hopes are high. If Harmon is able to improve upon the sound of GC fave the Soundsticks II then we'll definitely be in for a treat. Expected by Christmas the Go and Play should retail for around ?230.

A new month a new hot gadget model on I4U News. September belongs to beautiful model Mandee.

Mandee (love that name) takes two Axion portable TVs to the ballpark. We picked the Angels team outfit because, you guessed it, Mandee is an angel. Baseball, TVs and a hot model, what do you want more. Ok, beer is missing.

Enjoy the photos now!(Depending on your Company?s culture the photos might not be safe for work).

You can also get a Free Mandee as Wallpaper for your Desktop.

The Axion AXN-5327A is a compact portable TV with a 2.5" TFT screen. The second Axion TV featured in our gadget model photo spread is the AXN-5500. This portable TV has a 5 inch screen. Thank you AXION for providing your products for our September Gadget model photos.
Mandee about herself: I was born and raised in California where I currently reside. I work full time while I finish my last year of college; obtaining a bachelors degree in business management. For fun, I love to hang out with the people I love the most, go to the beach, gym, and of course shopping.

Modeling is something that I have been encouraged to try by others in the past and I have always had on my list of things to do. I have just recently started modeling and have come to really enjoy it! I am a highly dedicated and motivated individual who is willing to work hard to fulfill my dreams and try just about anything once! I am excited to see where this new venture takes me!

A Canadian company has an answer for all those times that your laptop, iPod, PDA or cell phone runs out of juice where an electrical current is nowhere to be found. Xantrex's XPower PowerSource Mobile 100 is like a portable AC outlet designed to charge and run portable devices from wherever you happen to be.

The device is basically a lithium-ion battery with an inverter, a grounded electrical power plug and two USB power plugs for BlackBerrys, iPods and other devices that can draw power from PC USB ports. The USB ports and AC plug can be used at the same time to charge or operate two devices at once.

The device can be charged from any 110-volt wall outlet or a 12-volt vehicle power outlet -- what used to be called a car cigarette lighter -- so it doubles as a car adapter. It weighs 17 ounces and measures about 1 by 3 by 5 inches.

The company says it can power a laptop for two hours, an iPod for 44 hours or a cell phone for 12 hours of standby. The estimates include the time that the device being charged can run on its own battery after receiving a charge from the PowerSource.

It did an excellent job powering up one of my laptops but shut down immediately when I plugged in one with a hungrier power need.

A company representative acknowledged that there are "a small number of laptop AC power adapters or 'bricks' that were designed for docking stations, draw more than the 100-watt limit of the Mobile 100 and cause the device to automatically shut down.''

Xantrex makes a line of battery-powered backup systems including some that can keep a home office running for several hours.

ANOTHER OPTION: I get cranky when my cell phone battery dies but that would be OK if I carried around the SideWinder Portable Power device because it has a crank that you can use to generate power for a few minutes of talk time.

At under three ounces, it's a lot easier to carry than the Xantrex unit, but it's not nearly as powerful or versatile. It works with a limited number of phones (go to sidewindercharger.com for a list) and requires two minutes of cranking for every six minutes of extra talking.

The news that Samsung is to become a new entrant into the online music store market, using MusicNet as media provider, has created a new dynamic, with three hardware manufacturers soon to be using the music ecosystem model pioneered by Apple with the iTunes-iPod connection.

There are a couple of interesting aspects to this news. One is that Samsung's move is an acknowledgement that to be a player in the portable music player space, a company needs to be more than just a hardware vendor. Another is that there appears to be a looming digital rights
management war between Apple's FairPlay DRM based on QuickTime and Microsoft's PlayForSure based on Windows Media Player 10.

However, the reality is that the real DRM battle will start when Microsoft's Zune hits the market and, whehn that happens, PlayForSure DRM is not likely to be a major force.

Samsung is a hardware company, yet it has recognized that it will never be able to differentiate itself from the pack of MP3 player suppliers unless it has its own online music store connection like Apple. Microsoft, primarily a software company, has come to the same conclusion from the other end of the spectrum, so it plans both a music store and its Zune MP3 player.

Understanding that Apple has a stranglehold on the market in the US but is slightly weaker in Europe and Asia, Samsung plans to focus its efforts initially in those markets.

Samsung, like other music player companies aside from Apple, such as SanDisk, Creative and iRiver, uses the Windows Media Player 10 DRM.

When Microsoft releases Zune, however, it will not use its own licensed PlayForSure DRM. Instead Microsoft will create a new DRM compatible with Windows Media Player 11 but not PlayForSure, in effect ditching its PlayForSure partners in favour of creating a closed music ecosystem like Apple.

Thus, when Zune launches there will be three main competing DRM systems, two of which will be owned by Microsoft.

There has also been some speculation that Microsoft will attempt to lure PlayForSure users over to Zune by offering them free one-off transfers of their music files upon purchasing a Zune player. If that happens, as it probably will, PlayForSure licensees will find themselves in a spot of bother as the transfer will only go one way and there is likely to be considerable leakage of users.

Aiming to better compete with Apple Computer's iTunes, Samsung on Friday announced that it will develop its own music service in conjunction with a new series of portable players that will debut later this year.

Samsung is tapping New York-based MusicNet to power the service, which will offer both download sales and subscription options. The service will initially be available in the United Kingdom, France and Germany, but Samsung says it hopes to expand throughout Europe and Asia.

The move follows Microsoft's announcement in July that it will launch its Zune player and service, competing directly with former partners, including Samsung, Creative Labs, iRiver and others. Until announcing the Zune, Microsoft had focused on getting others to build devices and music services that used the company's Windows Media Audio format. The various devices and music services were marketed under Microsoft's PlaysForSure brand, an effort that has been thrown into question now that Microsoft is developing the Zune.

Samsung said the service will work with a number of its new media players, including the striking new K5 player, which sports a built-in speaker system.

"Our partnership with MusicNet completes our product package," Seungsoo Park, vice president of Samsung's digital audio-video unit, said in a statement. Park said the company selected MusicNet because of its experience in creating other such services. MusicNet provides access to major-label music for a number of services, including Yahoo, MTV Networks' Urge and MusicGremlin, according to a MusicNet representative.

Samsung's decision also follows Nokia's announcement earlier this month that it would buy digital-music distributor Loudeye.

After spending years trying to compete against Apple's iTunes and iPod combination through a variety of devices and music services that could interoperate, many of Apple's rivals are now trying to build integrated devices and services.

Gartner analyst Michael McGuire said Microsoft has provided little clarity for its PlaysForSure partners as to how much support they will see going forward or how Zune will work with their players and services. As a result, he said he expects to see others follow Samsung's lead.

"Hardware makers make their money leveraging their manufacturing capacity," he said. "It's not good to let a lot of those things run idle. I think you can expect a lot of them to be doing similar types of things until there is more clarity."

The latest weapon in Creative's cold war against all things iPod is the Zen Vision W, a portable video player that appears to improve upon its predecessor, the Zen Vision. Vision Dubya comes at us with a 4.3-inch widescreen LCD that's clocked at 480 x 272 pixels ? the same as Sony's PSP. We hope the lab coats at Creative have made some upgrades since designing the original Zen Vision's screen, which was certainly sharp but noticeably less vibrant than the displays on more recent portables like the video iPod and Creative's own Zen Vision:M. But there's also a video output when you want to watch your digital vids on something bigger. Of course, it'll play all the standard video and audio formats (Windows Media, DivX, AVI, MPEG-4, MP3, etc.), has an FM tuner, serves as your organizer ? blahblahblah yaddayaddayadda ? though apart from the display it looks like it has the same bag of tricks as the Zen Vision. The 30-GB version of the Vision W will cost a little more than $400 US while the 60-GB model is about $475. It's only available in Singapore right now, but we'll keep our eyes peeled for a U.S. release.

Portable TVs always sound like kind of cool idea in theory, but when you actually try to use one you find that they either aren't portable at all due to needing to be hooked up to a cable source or the quality is terrible due to bad reception. Samsung is releasing the R7, a big ol' 10-inch portable TV that doesn't seem to be addressing any of the concerns that have kept portable TVs from ever catching on. It apparently has "excellent mobile receiving characteristics," so perhaps in large cities the reception issue wouldn't be so bad, but unless you live near somewhere that is broadcasting digitally over the airwaves you'll be stuck either plugging into a wall or into a portable hard drive. Yes, you can plug a hard drive in to watch videos, but wouldn't a laptop be just as easy for this? There's no word on pricing or a release date for the R7 as of yet. ---------Via Slashphone

In the modern days, mobility is more than a need. It has transformed to lifestyle in the form of mobile phones, laptops, portable DVD players, rechargeable torch lights and battery-operated shavers. At the back of all these mobility enhancing devices is the power centre or the rechargeable battery pack. These packs come in different sizes, shapes and ratings. While some are generic in nature and can be used in more than one product, majority are custom designed for specific products and applications.

Moving a step ahead, these products are used worldwide and predominantly used by domestic and international travellers. This calls for superior design to meet wider ambient conditions.
While rechargeable batteries can be made with active materials, lithium-ion batteries are the most common. These Li-ion batteries are constructed with coated anode and cathode foils separated by thin layers of a polymer material. A corollary to this can be a bread sandwich with jam applied in between. Using advanced machinery, such coated layers are wound to arrive at individual Li-ion cell. To increase the battery capacity, it is essential to increase the surface area of the active polymer separators, by increasing the number of layers.

However, the catch is to keep the size, shape and weight of the battery within mobility limits. This calls for applying thinner polymer separators such that more and more layers can be added between multiple cathode ? anode combinations.

Battery packs used for backup in such electronic devices are generally safe as long as they are adhere to the following norms:

> Strict quality control while manufacturing
> User meets operating guidelines
Safe disposal of used/dead batteries
> Quality control in manufacturing

We believe that thinner the polymer separators, better is the result towards size, weight and capacity. However, there is a limitation to this. When the polymer becomes thinner below the threshold limit, it poses a safety hazard.

If there are any contaminants or metal particles in these separators, there is possibility of cathode ? anode short-circuiting. If a large particle of conductive material penetrates the separator, connecting the anode and cathode, or a small particle of conductive material comes in between the anode and cathode, it results in short circuiting.

This results in ?thermal runaway?, where the battery cell releases all its energy at once. Here is the possibility of overheating and fire hazard.

Strict quality control measures ensuring no metal particles in the separators at the time of manufacturing, can provide safety for the users.

While all measures are taken by the product manufacturers to protect batteries from ambient conditions such as heat and humidity and electrical circuitry, it is still important for the users to adhere to operating guidelines. These are:

> Product usage within the specified ambient conditions
> Using the exact replacement batteries as specified by the vendors
> Using the right charger to recharge the batteries

It is important to meet the disposal guidelines too. Used and defective batteries cannot be handled the way the general litters are handled.

Thus, products from renowned brands like LG, having core manufacturing competence with strict quality control, backed with user awareness on do?s and don?ts can provide maximum safety to the users, while offering the best mobility solutions.

Saturday, August 26, 2006: Mumbai: A notebook which combines aesthetics, style, durability and a whole gamut of latest desirable features all rolled into a very compact, slim and light package. Yes! we are talking about the latest offering by ASUSTeK Computer Inc, the 12.1? ultra portable U5F Notebook Series.

With its unique splendid technology and built-in Bluetooth EDR, the sleek and compact U5F is perfect for business professionals who demand true mobility with full connectivity on the go.

All parts of the notebook, from interior components to exterior housing and paint are environment friendly and comply with RoHS regulations Directive 2002/95/EC (Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment).

The slim and lightweight U5F, weighing only 1.4kg, offers the best mobile computing solution. The unique seamless touch pad design allows users to type and navigate the cursor in one fluid operation while eliminating annoying dust accumulation.

Incorporated with the latest 'Splendid Color Enhancement Engine' technology, the 12.1" LCD screen displays images with enhanced contrast, brightness, skin tone and colour saturation for vivid presentations.

Equipped with the latest Dual Core processing, the U5F enables users to simultaneously run demanding applications, such as running virus scan while talking on Skype and surfing the web. The U5F's exhilarating capabilities will immerse users in riveting vibrant entertainment at home or on the go with the built-in features of your new mobile dual-core processor-based laptops.

Bluetooth V2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) allows omnidirectional wireless connection and enables a high data transfer rate of 2.1 Mbps that is three times faster than standard Bluetooth without EDR.

So all those who love using technology on the go, ASUSTek's U5F Notebook Computer is the word.