We’ve gotten our hands on some pretty cool and powerful lasers in the past, but never one of quite this magnitude. If you were wondering if there really is a difference between laser pointers, or if there is a difference between a $300 laser and a $1700 laser; well we’re here to tell you that there is.

From the time we opened the box of the Spyder II GX we could tell that this one meant business. The Spyder II is another green laser with a beam that can be seen from miles and miles away, literally. It’s powered by a special single LI-ION 18650 rechargeable battery (the device comes with 2 of them and a charger) and is housed in a military grade, water resistant case. It operates by a rubber toggle switch in the back that keeps it on until you press it again, unlike the Elite Series which requires you to hold it to keep the laser on.

Motorola introduced its VE465 semi-rugged clamshell handset, available on Alltel’s website. But there’s no word on pricing details just yet. Those living in Canada can check out the VE465 on Telus if inclined, where it shall be known as the “Motorola VE465 Active Edition”.

Some specs include: CDMA 800/1900/1700/2100 connectivity, 1.9″ TFT internal display with 176 x 220 pixels and 65k colors, 1.05″ CSTN external display with 96 x 80 pixels, Brew OS, Stereo Bluetooth, Music/video player, 1.3 megapixel camera, USB 2.0, and a microSD memory card slot.

So here we are, another day a couple more Acer product announcements sans photos. Thanks Acer for forcing me to use another generic photo for the story. Anyway, the products may be of interest to some of you out there who are shopping for a new LCD or a small form factor PC.

Acer has announced its 23-inch touch control LCD that boasts full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution. The display is called the Acer H233H bmid and sports a 75Mhz refresh rate, 5ms response time and a contrast ratio of 40000:1. Inputs include HDMI, DVI, and VGA with a MSRP of $229.99.

Right now, I live in a single story home of about 1700 square feet. You would think in that modest amount of space that a Wi-Fi signal would be strong everywhere. That isn’t the case, in the living room (a mere 10 feet) from the hub my PS3 often can’t connect to the Web.

To fix that problem I have been eyeing some powerline networking gear and Buffalo has introduced some new kit. The Buffalo PL2-UPA-L1 is the firm’s latest powerline networking gear and uses the DS2 chipset. This means that it is compatible with any other DS2 chipset networking gear around.

Microsoft has now confirmed rumors about upgrading the internal memory for its Xbox 360 Arcade game console to have 256MB of internal storage. The upgrade will allow more games and media to be stored inside without the need for an external memory card.

In the current 360 Arcade models, users were required to use an external 256MB card to store information. This worked well for the most part but left the memory open to being removed at the wrong time giving the system adverse effects, and to just plain losing the memory card.

Some of us miss the days when you had to actually venture out of the house and head to the arcade to play games. Ah, brings back memories of poorly lit, smoke filled rooms filled with the beeps and blips of virtual deaths and level starts. Quarters flowed like wine, which we did not drink, but poured willingly down the slotted throats of our electronic masters. The Optime Strategies video gaming table will take you back in time my friend.

It’s powered by a built in PC and comes preloaded with over 1700 vintage games including all your favorites like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and Frogger, all made possible by software developed by a group called MAME. It’s the real deal. The graphics and music files have been downloaded directly from the original arcade versions making them 100% authentic. The only way it gets more authentic is if you spill some beer on it and add a cigarette burn. The price is the only thing that is lame at $5,180.

Sony Ericsson is struggling to gain market share in the mobile phone arena. Sony Ericsson has not enjoyed much success in the market and is out to grow its business. Launching cool handsets is one way to grow its market and another is to make its handsets available on more networks.

Sony Ericsson announced today that it is producing its first handset built specifically for the AWS spectrum 1700/2100 network that T-Mobile operates in America. The handset is the first from Sony Ericsson to support T-Mobile and is called the TM506. The TM506 connects to T-Mobile’s 3G network.

Wicked Lasers recently gave us the opportunity to check out one of their popular laser pointers, which gave us quite a surprise. Actually, before we received it we called it a laser pointer but not any more. Wicked Lasers assured us that it is not a laser pointer – it truly is a wicked laser, and we can’t disagree.

The sample product we received was from the Elite Series of green lasers, specifically the Elite 125. This laser appears to be around the middle of the road for the different lasers offered by Wicked Lasers. The average output power according to the company runs from 125mW to 149mW. They also have lasers in their catalog with as little as 50mW and as much as 300mW. The Elite 125 for us had plenty of power and made it very clear why this is not a laser pointer for regular presentations. For starters it would be difficult to see anything on a presentation screen because the light from the laser is way too bright, even from across a large room. Also, the crowd would be so distracted by what you’re using to point with they’d never pay attention to anything else you’re trying to show them.

I’m the go to guy for my friends and family when it comes time to buy a new computer. They always want to know what sort to of PC they should buy. For the most part my family doesn’t play games and don’t need the quad-core, SLI running beasts that I am fond of. What dear old mom and dad need is a simple system that will surf the net and can be bought cheap.

The name eMachines is pretty much synonymous with cheap computers today and it announced a pair of new and low cost machines that would do mom and dad proud. The first new machine is the eMachines T3646 and the rig can be had for only $299.99 without a display. At that price you won’t get high-end components. The machine runs on an AMD Sempron LE-1250 CPU, sports 1GB of RAM and has a 160GB hard drive. The OS is Windows Vista Home Basic.

Among the many product announcements released by Sony Ericsson today the most significant has to be the release of the new XPERIA line by introducing the XPERIA X1. The new XPERIA brand marks a new era for Sony Ericsson in mobile devices, with this sweet-looking new model featuring a whole host of communication mediums, driven from a touch screen and full-QWERTY keyboard and riding on Windows Mobile 6.

SE calls the design of the X1 an “arch slider” as it slides up to expose the full keyboard with a large 3-inch VGA display on top. The impressive list of features continues with a 3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus and video, a microSD slot and communications via Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi, and quad-band GSM/EDGE, and 900/1700/1900/2100MHz UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA.

How do you know the analog television era is truly coming to an end? When retailers announce publicly they are no longer going to carry these products on store shelves. Such is the case with an announcement today from Best Buy.

Best Buy, the largest CE retailer across the land, has “pulled all remaining analog television products from store shelves and will only sell digital video tuners in the future.” It will also take part in a national coupon program to help people purchase digital converter boxes for existing analog televisions.

It looks like Sony has come through on those OLED TV’s they’ve been touting since as far back as January. Today the company has finally unveiled information on the release of these super-slim televisions boasting 1,000,000:1 contrast.

That 3mm truly makes this new OLED from Sony the thinnest TV/monitor thing going (and probably the most fragile). Sony says the XEL-1 OLED TV with an 11-inch display will be available in Japan on December 1 going for about $1700. The new XEL-1 will have a built-in tuner, 960 x 450 resolution, HDMI input as well as USB and ethernet, two 1W built-in speakers and measures 287 × 140 × 253mm.

In a major hit to HD DVD supporters, Blockbuster has decided to go with the rival Blu-ray high definition DVD format in 1,450 of its 1700 stores across the nation. This decision was made after a year of renting both the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats in their stores after which the video rental giant found that Blu-ray was preferred by its consumers over 70% of the time.

According to the announcement, the Blu-ray titles will still be offered for rent online but a vast majority …

According to the Notebook Italia website Dell is about to unveil a new series of Inspiron and a new model laptop called a Vostro. The Vostro selection will appear initially as two models, the 1500 (with a 15.4-inch display) and the 1700 (17-inch screen) with the latter unit coming out in July.

The Vostro models will only use Intel processors while the Inspirons use either the Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Turion 64 X2 chips. Among the new Inspirons forthcoming are the 1520, …

So you’re a Japanese gadget guru, what do you have in your house? A 200-inch theater screen of course. Even wonder what a PlayStation 3 would look like on a giant screen TV? Well here are the amazing pictures.

From the English version it appears that the only down side was that the text in the game was hard to read. This is probably because even the game designers didn’t have a 200-inch monster TV. The PlayStation 3 was connected to …