I am still patiently waiting for the day when NAND flash gets cheap enough that we can stop using normal hard drives and go for SSD drives in our notebooks. I could certainly use all of the battery life I can get and faster boot speeds are great too.

Super Talent announced a new line of SSD drives today that are direct replacements for normal 2.5-inch hard drives and use the SATA-II interface. The drives are called MasterDrive SSD and use a proprietary algorithm to extend the life of the drives.

Everywhere you look the proof of how successful the Apple iPod is abounds. It seems like everything is getting its own docking slot for an iPod. We have iPod clocks, iPod toilets, iPod stereos and the list goes on. 1000 years from now when researchers look back on this decade they will think we all needed help getting a woody and everyone needed a place to dock their iPod.

Naturally a new iPod docking device has turned up, this time in the form of a lamp. A company called Checkolite has a new iPod compatible, docking lamp for your desk. There are three lamp models that are available in black or white colors.

The idea of putting notebook computers into the hands of kids around the world to allow them to improve their education is a noble thought. The field was pioneered by the OLPC with its XO Notebook and an early partner with the OLPC was Intel.

Once Intel caught a glimpse of what the market could be for ultra low cost notebooks it entered the fray with its own low cost notebook called the Classmate. Intel announced today that it has the second generation Classmate ready for use around the world.

An outfit by the name of PDASmart has announced a longer running battery specifically designed for the iPod 5G 30 GB model. This battery upgrade will run you around $75.

PDASmart says its upgraded iPod 5G 30GB battery will let you enjoy “over 45 hours on continuous song playing and an impressive 24 hour video playing time.” It installs obviously where the current battery is and also being made available by PDASmart is a special rear casing which slightly expands this particular iPod’s size to accommodate the battery.

One iRiver itemed we regrettably missed covering from CES earlier this month is the hot looking Unit2. We weren’t sure about when it might be released but word from TWICE is the Unit2 will have a “late-year delivery,” with pricing between $800 and $1,000.

The iRiver Unit2 pulls together a bunch of features into one device, according to a recent iRiver press release. These functions include “Audio, Video, DVD player, DiVX player, CD player, FM Tuner, VoIP phone, VoIP Video Phone, SMS/MMS, Web Browsing, Web Mail.” It sports a seven-inch touch screen interface and has built-in stereo speakers to act as a desktop audio system.

Haier America (?!) this week used CES as its platform for getting into the wireless MP3 player market. It unveiled a new line up of flash and hard drive based portable media players which make use of online services like Rhapsody to collect content wirelessly. This players are called the ibiza Rhapsody and it is available now in at least a 30GB hard drive model.

The ibiza Rhapsody players for Haier let you, in summary, have “Wi-Fi enabled access to unlimited digital entertainment possibilities. With the ibiza Rhapsody, consumers can now enjoy the Rhapsody digital music service, AOL Video and other digital content from just about anywhere there’s an available Wi-Fi hotspot.” You can also directly subscribe to a variety of podcasts from the player and enjoy an integrated FM radio.

Get the full details after the jump.

At the CES show this year JVC is launching a new line of their Everio hard disk camcoders, ranging in features, hard drive capacities and even coming in four different colors. JVC is also touting this new lineup to currently be the worlds smallest HDD camcorders available at around 20 percent smaller than the previous models.

All these camcorders utilize a hard disk drive to store video and pictures, ridding the need for discs or tapes, and they come with HDD capacities of either 30GB or 60GB and with or without docks depending on the model. They all also feature an SD card slot, 2.7-inch widescreen LCD and a new touch-sensitive scroll bar to the right of the LCD screen for navigating the menus and selecting videos. This sounds like it would be nice since it still allows easy touch navigation but lets JVC use a better display and avoid finger prints all over it, as what happens when using an actual touch screen.

Maxian E900T is a new PMP from Korea. Some of the features are a 4.3″ TFT touch screen, interface buttons on both sides, comes in a 30GB and 60GB version. Has the usual memory slot for SD cards, and a Li-Ion battery that has 4000mAh capacity. It has both music and video playback, a DMB receiver, GPS navigation, even a dictionary.

The Windows CE-based system boasts an 800 x 480 4.3-inch touchscreen, support for WMV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DiVX / XviD, H.264, WMA, AAC, MP3, and OGG formats. The E900T is capable of outputting 720p HD video, sports Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound, and Burr-Brown audio circuitry which outputs via S/PDIF. In it’s car mount it turns into a full featured GPS navigator. Basically, this is an all in one PMP that looks pretty promising.

Cowon America is out today with another portable media player to throw on your holiday wish list. The new Cowon A3 is available in 30GB and 60GB configurations for around $350 and $400 respectively.

The Cowon A3 is a very typical portable media player which offers versatility in the number of functions it offers and media formats it supports. It sports a four-inch widescreen display and weighs under 10 ounces. It can record directly from a TV, DVD player or camcorder and can decode HD video for playback on its display. Battery life is estimated at nine hours for audio and seven hours for video.

The computers in cars that most people talk about have to do with the drivetrain or GPS etc. Those can’t browse the web or allow you to edit documents the way a desktop PC can. Jensen thinks it has the answer with it’s NVX3000PC, which is on show at SEMA 2007.

The device is portable of course and features a 7″ touch screen and Windows Vista operating system. Inside, it has a 30GB Hard Drive, integrated Wi-Fi modem, and a 1GHz Via processor. You can even connect it to Desktop or Notebooks with a sync port cable, which is nice. As you might expect, it comes with a built-in GPS system of it’s own. You can even play audio for navigation and music files either through it’s own speaker or streamed to the car’s speakers, because it has an integrated FM transmitter.

How’s this for one sweet looking navigation and DVD in-car entertainment system? The Clarion MAX973HD certainly is a radical design step from your typical in-car systems, though we at this point have no scheduled release or pricing info.

The Clarion MAX973HD sports a seven-inch touch panel control. All data is stored on a 30GB hard drive. This device lets you enjoy entertainment via a variety of methods, be it compatibility with DVD±R/DVD±RW/CD-R/CD-RW discs, a TV tuner, a SD card slot or your iPod. There’s also Bluetooth support and a microphone so you can talk handsfree while driving or issue voice commands to the system.

As the launch of the second generation Zune, or Zune 2, from Microsoft nears the rumors are flying at full steam regarding pricing and the features that the new media players will house. From what we’ve ascertained the launch is scheduled for October 3rd at midnight and will bring three new models of the Microsoft Zune player along with new features and content on the Zune Marketplace (iTunes for Zunes).

Along with some FCC leaks showing 4GB and 8GB flashed-based Zunes (codenamed “draco”), ZuneScene has the skinny on pricing along with some additional juicy details. These are still in the rumor stages mind you, but it looks like a new 80GB version will be going for $249 with an 8GB model going for $199 and a 4GB model for $149. The 8GB and 4GB models are expected to come in black, red, green or pink but the thinner 80GB will come in only black.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft made a decision to give the Zune a price cut by $50 the day Apple’s making an announcement about what many are expecting to be a new iPod. The company stated that this price cut is just part of the normal product life cycle and that some recent research indicated a 94% customer satisfaction result with the 30GB product causing them to lower the price so more customers can experience the Zune.

Does this mean we going to see a new Zune soon? Maybe that …

The new X2 AIO portable media player from Viliv comes completely packed with cool features all viewable through it’s 4.3-inch display. It carries the ability to playback pictures, music and videos, and has a built-in digital TV tuner (T-DMB). It even supports picture-in-picture letting you use things like its GPS capabilities or its on-board dictionary while watching a live television program in the corner.

The Viliv X2 AIO comes in two versions: a 30GB costing $585 and a 60GB at about $640. If the T-DMB support wasn’t clue enough, …

Today Hitachi has announced two new Blu-ray disc camcorders which they are calling the worlds first camcorders that can record high-definition video to Blu-ray. Both camcorders have the ability to record full high-definition video directly to a single-side, single-layer Blu-ray disc giving up to one hour of 1920×1080 resolution video on the disc.

The DZ-BD7H model is actually a “hybrid” camcorder with the ability to record the high-definition video to either the Blu-ray disc or an internal 30GB hard drive which can hold up to four hours of the 1920×1080 high-def video. Once recorded onto …