Philip Reed’s Technology Home

Oftentimes, Brando’s assortment of “must-have” doohickeys don’t actually do much for your productivity level. This particular gizmo, however, bucks that trend in glorious fashion. The $23 USB 4-in-1 Web Cam is a fairly standard desk lamp with built-in LEDs that also acts as a webcam, voice input device and fan. Best of all, this one’s USB-powered, though that could spell disaster (or “USB hub”) if your sockets are already occupied with other Brando gear.

The next-generation Q1 Ultra may be due next year, but Sammy’s trying to squeeze every bit of life it can out of the current iteration with two new flavors. Announced today, the Q1U-CMXP boasts an integrated HSDPA 3G cellular modem, while the Q1UP-V is a Q1 Ultra Premium featuring Vista Business. As for the former, it includes just about every connectivity option you could wish for: 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, Ethernet and a WWAN modem that connects to the AT&T Broadband Connect network; outside of the one new feature, however, the specifications are the same as the standard Q1 Ultra XP model that was launched in May of 2007. Both newcomers (if you can call ‘em that) are available as we speak for $1,499 and $1,449 in order of mention.

CBHD, née CH-DVD — the Chinese version of the now-deceased HD DVD format — is in production, gearing up for a fourth quarter launch. DigiTimes cites reports from enorth.com.cn that Shanghai United Optical Disc has laid out the first production line, although Taiwanese disc makers (already burned by HD DVD) aren’t as confident it can take on Blu-ray, even with considerably lower royalty fees and hardware costs for disc replicators. Coming alongside news that Chinese-built Blu-ray players based on increasingly affordable hardware is on the way, plus a decided lack of studio support, it’s not hard to see how this one will turn out (again.) Not to underrate China’s national pride, but unless it can gain an unexpected foothold among DVD pirates, CBHD will probably be on the high definition scrap heap alongside HD DVD, EVD and the rest before long.

If you’ve experienced some shockingly slow results from your Windows Home Server-based unit, we’ve one question for you: do you have Power Pack 1 and the HP add-ons installed? If so, you may not be alone in your frustrations. Apparently a number of users have seen dramatic slowdowns that have rendered their WHS devices nearly unusable. It seems that all the “bloatware” really takes a toll, as the hard drives are constantly pounded and console menus take ages (minutes, to be more precise) to appear. According to Within Windows, the only real solutions are to install more RAM and / or tweak your pagefile configurations afterwards. Anyone else raging mad about the performance issues? What are you going to do about it?

If you’ve been paying attention, you remember all those blurry-vision pictures of an upcoming Dell mini desktop called the Studio Hybrid. As it turns out, those spy images were more than speculation, as an anonymous reader tipped us off to one of Dell’s internal customer service session pages that guides the rep through some wireless keyboard and mouse resynchronization steps. The Dell Studio Hybrid appears to be codenamed “Nausicaa” (if image filenames are to be believed) and will ship with a wireless mouse and keyboard. It seems Dell believes that customers will need some help setting up these potentially finicky peripherals. As for when this new mini-desktop will be available, we’re still in the dark on that, but a back-to-school number this like wouldn’t be such a bad idea. We’re not sure how long the page will remain up once our readers have poked at it, but we captured the images in a handy gallery for that inevitable moment.