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Time once again for a choice pick of gadgets from the latest CE crop...We'll drive past a Smart Drive kit for the iPhone - featuring big buttons and big letters and points-of-interest sourced from Bing - which will only be of interest if you drive a Daimler, and momentarily pause by new touchscreen cameras and camcorders from HP...
The CW450t (costing $109, and pictured below) and CW460t ($149) models have 2.7- and 3-inch touch screens, while the V5061u ($169) and V5560u ($199) camcorders have 3-inch touch screens and shoot full 1080p video. They also have 5x optical zoom compared to the 4x optical zoom of their stills-brothers.
"That's not all for HP's low-end imaging assault: there's also the $99 CW450 and $129 SW450 cams with 4x zooms, the $149 PW550z with a 5x zoom, and the $109 V1020h camcorder that shoots 720p. Yes, it's a confusing mish-mash of letters, numbers, and bargain-basement prices," reports engadget. Phew, indeed.
Also making a splash are a couple of water proof cameras - from Samsung and Sony - nicely in time for messing around near water on the summer beach or hotel pool. The Samsung AQ100 (acqua - geddit?) - is just 0.78-inches thick and is designed for use in water up to 10 feet deep. It also records 720p video.The slightly lower-specced Sony Cyber-shot TX5, is a 10.2 megapixel device with a 3-inch touchscreen display. It also features a 4x optical zoom and supports 720p video recording.
But none of these are the featured Gadget of the Week. before we come to that, just a quick tip of the hat to the nifty Gorillapod Magnetic flexible tripod, from Joby (pictured left).
We are familiar with flexiple stands, but adding magnetism is a simple but obvious stroke of genius. And also a quick mention of Corsair Padlock 2 data dongle (below), which provides 256-bit AES encryption and decryption via the little keypad on the device.
So, without more ado - the rather randomly selected, but fully-deserved Gadget of the Week award goes to Sharkoon for its USB 3.0 SATA Dual HDD Dock (pictured at the very top of this post).
Data storage may never be sexy but this has the look of an eminently practical device - what with the proliferation of old laptops with their ever diminishing shelf life. For example, what quicker way to copy the contents of an old laptop or PC to a new one? And did I mention the USB 3.0?
Basically, you can plug in 2.5 or 3.5-inch hard disks into two chambers, which communicate directly with a computer. The use of separate hinges enables you to use either a desktop or a laptop hard drive.
Some of the features of the Sharkoon docking station include LED indicator lights that display drive activity, lighting up when the drive is in use and turning off when their is no drive spinning. There are also independent power switches and eject buttons to allow for the release of the HDD from each of the chambers. Each drive chamber also includes a separate USB 3.0 connection and since it is a plug and play device, once connected to the host PC, auto detection of the drives will occur, allowing them to be subsequently accessible, reports coated.com.
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