Business laptops. The mind shudders at the thought. Lifeless designs, inflated prices and various “sensible” options define the corporate laptop. Can Asus bring anything new to the party with the B23E? Not in the slightest, but at least it looks the part. Asus had an incredible show at this year’s CES, but kept the B23E in the stables. It’s not going to set the tech world on fire, but it is going to set you back a cool US$1000 or more ...

Devium is utilising Kickstarter to bring Dash to life, a car stereo dock that will put your iPhone in the center of your center console. Rather than connecting your iPhone via a cable or Bluetooth, Dash lets you turn your iPhone into a car audio system while simultaneously charging your device. Beyond just an audio system, imagine using all the apps -- especially GPS -- on your iPhone this way. Dash is a simple two component system consisting of a faceplate which ...

Love your mobile phone, but hate its capacity to run flat at the most inconvenient moments? This defining ethos for mobile phones is a global issue soon to be curtailed by the University of Cambridge. IEEE Fellow Arokia Nathan now promises a future where phones may never need to be plugged in, ever again. Nathan's group of resourceful scientists have cooked up a prototype device which takes ambient light and converts it into juicy energy. An array of solar cells, made ...

The Nokia 700 is a beautiful phone, with a dreadful OS, and some redeeming features. I tear it apart like a rare fillet in a New York diner. Overall design In a word, solid. In a longer word, rock-solid. The 700 smacks of passion. Its diminutive proportions may be too tiny for my meaty paws, but in a normal sized hand it rests comfortably, like a shivering metal kitten. The 0.096kg weight combined with a length of 11cm is a masterstroke of design. ...

I feel like we take compression for granted. It’s like the bass player in a band. While the lead guitarist or singer gets decorated with undergarments from the ladies, the unsung bassist grooves in the background, playing the vital role of filling out the low end of the frequency spectrum and blowing your hair back. Compression technologies and the network infrastructure upon which they function are key to delivering our LOLcats, Nyan Cats, Honeybadgers and Rebecca Blacks, but with all ...

The jailbreak for both A5 iDevices running iOS 5.0.1, namely the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S has landed. Absinthe runs on both Windows and Mac PCs and is seemingly the easiest jailbreak process yet. Pod2g is the self-confessed "iOS security researcher" who developed the jailbreak along with Team Chronic. A simple process The jailbreak works on the iPad 2 running iOS 5.0.1 and the iPhone 4S running iOS 5.0.1 or iOS 5.0. Step 1: Download the Windows or Mac build of Absinthe, depending on your setup. Step ...

This week I take a look at AVPlayer HD, a fully functional and easy to use video player for the iPad that completely blows away the competition with its uncluttered usability and unrivalled format support. I'll be honest, when I first decided to get an iPad 2, I justified it to myself by saying that it would be a great addition to my working life and be used to take and effortlessly share notes in meetings, present strategies to potential clients ...

Convergence is a brutal mistress, lovingly embraced by Samsung and hurriedly implemented by others in less-than successful gadgets. In Japan though, where "weird" is seemingly the norm, a company called Net LED Technology has now combined LED lights with Wi-Fi devices. It’s what you always dreamed of. A smartphone that can control your light source. NetLED is beautifully simple in its execution, but brutally expensive. For roughly US$780, a user can install the netLED router which acts as the digital middleman ...

Having once been the world's first device to receive Google’s tablet tailored OS -- Honeycomb --, the Wi-Fi version of the Motorola XOOM now also becomes one of the first tablets to receive an official update to the latest version of Google's venerable gadget operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). Motorola released a changelog for its ICS update, and, as with Honeycomb, you can expect as close to a plain vanilla Android 4.0 experience as you can hope for. According ...

It feels cheap, the sound quality is dire, and the signal is rarely clear. But hell, I love the DSTV Walka. It’s compact, low-res and filled with charm. But is it worth dropping R600 plus the R36 per month subscription? Clear and present danger The DStv Walka is a handheld TV with a dubious name, but oodles of personality. The screen is tiny -- a mere 320p by 240p resolution which can by no means compete with the full HD capability of ...