The Best New Devices

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The latest and greatest from Singapore’s Computerworld

This year’s Singapore Computerworld featured products that will hit the shelf in the next year. Below are the highlights:

• LG Plasma TV with DVR: 50 and 60 inch widescreen high definition TVs with BUILT IT High Definition Digital Video Recorders. The recorder can hold 160GB which equals about 13 hours of HD TV…It should be available this month for about $8000-$15,000.
• VHS to HDD Transfer: A Pioneer one-button transfer device for getting all those dusty VHS tapes over to DVD. Simple and a time saver…Can also transfer digital video to DVD at 100x speeds…It will cost about $805 overseas and as of now, no plans to sell in the US.



• Mini Laptop: Weighs 999 grams (which is light), and has a 7.2 inch screen. Using a Pentium M Processor with no optical drive, this Toshiba product will go for $2000 in the US.
• Bringing back the Mini Disc: A media that never really caught on here in the US, the minidisc, is going for broke this time. With a devout following and advantages over the cheaper CD-R media such as reliability and rewritability, Sony has created a MD drive that connects to PC via USB…Older MDs will work as well…The cost will be $142.



• Phone or Camera? Both, kind of. The new Pantech&Curitel PT-S100 camera phone was designed with photographers in mind but at 1.3 megapixels, may not be bringing over the masses…FM radio player and MP3 player built in, the phone/camera will be $495.
• Swivel! I should’ve thought of that! Mitsubishi is creating flat-panel HDTVs that now have built in motors that allow their base to be swiveled so that they face the viewer…Great for sun reflections on the screen, or if you fell off the couch and don’t feel like getting up to adjust your viewing angle.
• Do I hear THREE?! Toshiba has developed an HD-DVD disc that can hold 45GB…they have added a third layer to the HD-DVD disc in order to accomplish this.