Geekiness is quite an expensive passion, but not all gadgets and accompanying accessories require a serious look at finances before purchase. You’ve got the cheap stuff, and you have the really cheap stuff. Case in point: cables.

Whether you need an HDMI cable to hook up that player to your HDTV, or a way to make full use of your computer’s USB port, the general rule when it comes to cables is to take the time and look for the cheapest alternative. For what is a cable, but a bunch of wires providing the bridge between standard ports? Standard means mainstream, …read more

Is a tablet designed only for multi-touch gestures worth it? Technograph has specifics on four new Bamboo tablets from Wacom. All of them feature pen functionality, save for the Bamboo Touch. As made obvious by the name, it only supports touch-controls—this is the first tablet from Wacom that doesn’t work with a pen.
The Bamboo Touch is the cheapest member of the Bamboo refresh, which was all about integrating full multi-touch gestures into the drawing surface (or, in the case of the Touch, the “touching” surface?). Is it worth paying for an over-sized trackpad that mimics the touch functionality found in …read more

Over at Baron Bob are a set of keyboard stickers going for nearly $10. The benefits? Once the lights go out, the letters glow, a process better known as “glowing in the dark”. This should make the snottiness of those who can afford illuminated keyboards—like the fancy-shmancyLuxeed Dynamic Pixel LED keyboard—obsolete.

Really now? Personally, I think the trouble of washing a keyboard (incidentally you can actually wash many keyboards with soap and water, so long as you wait for them to dry before plugging them back in) and applying stickers to each key sounds like too much trouble. Also, pay a …read more

With Intel gaining attention for its new Lynnfield processors, AMD has fired back with its own $100 quad-core. At the same time it has also made strides in the GPU market, recently coming out with the first DirectX 11 compatible video hardware. Here’s a proclamation that:

ATI now stands unchallenged in Blu-ray audio processing, power consumption, single GPU performance, and performance per watt, DirectX 11, multi-monitor setups, anti-aliasing performance, and anisotropic accuracy. By any measure, the confluence of these qualities easily makes the Radeon HD 5000 the most significant shakeup of the GPU market in the last two years.
Pretty bold assertions, …read more

The contributions of Julien Madérou to humanity: the apparent invention of an iPhone dock made out of paper, and DIY instructions on how to make it made available for easy sharing. Now Apple fans have another way to maintain their snotty consumer-electronics superiority!
Seriously though, Madérou is a genius! He even made provisions for the iPhone cable! The instructions are available for printing on A4 or US letter (8.5″ x 11″) sheets, and are a simple matter of cutting out the template and following the video below.
I’m assuming a iPhone dock made out of Japanese paper will crumple in an instant …read more

Turns out someone figured how to make the Nintendo Wii Remote (affectionately known as the WiiMote) interface with a PC, of the Windows, Mac, and Linux variety. You just need the following:

1 Bluetooth Dongle (Cirago, $15)
1 Nintendo Wii Remote($36, free shipping)

Then, you can follow the instructions here. Personally though, I’m not sure if there are any worthy WiiMote apps for the computer. Yes, you can at the very least use a PC-enabled Wii Remote as a mouse (on Windows your use Wiinmote). But as anyone who’s played a Wii FPS will tell you, waving around a stick is nothing compared …read more

The Aura BluNote is a speaker set that accepts music streams via the Blutooth A2DP format, making it compatible with a wide variety of devices including PCs, laptops, mobiles, gaming consoles, and portable media players. It thankfully comes with a 3.5mm input jack for devices that don’t support Bluetooth.
Make Spracht wants you to know that the BluNote can store up to 8 Bluetooth device profiles, runs on an AC adapter or 4 AA batteries (both are included in the package), promises good audio quality through its Stereo Widening and Bass Boost functionality. On top of that, as a speaker, the …read more

Either I’m being punished for scrimping on my keyboard or I got spoiled by my laptop. As I write this, I’m doing my best to stay cool and keep my anger down. For some reason, one typographical error accompanies every phrase I type, and I believe it that has a lot to do with my keyboard.
My desktop keyboard, a no-name afterthought that cost around $5, seems to lack the spring and responsiveness of my laptop keyboard. There’s nothing wrong with the keyboard, but there’s something awfully wrong with the feel of it. My fingers for some reason can’t go on …read more

The benefits of a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) are clear. We all need, after all, enough time to save that important report or close that game properly, brownouts or blackouts be damned. Straight from the Tom’s Hardware Forums comes some sound advice.
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“Never plug any surge suppressor or power strip into the load side of a UPS. [They] can cause the UPS to drain its battery faster than expected, or cause the UPS to shut down or trip a circuit breaker.”
“Never plug any device into a UPS’s battery-protected outlets that… draws a high amount of power when first turned on. This …read more

At first glance, the Nokia N97 can do-it-all, literally featuring every cell phone functionality Nokia has come out with to date. But a particular feature will cause owners of this phone to be more careful with their stuff (and, not to mention, the phone itself).
You see, the N97 uses a microUSB port for both its USB cable and charger. This means older Nokia chargers won’t work with the phone—unless the bundled adapter is used. At least this means the phone can also draw power through a computer’s USB port.
At least the adapter accepts the older, thicker charger-pin, and the much …read more