Very Exclusive Gadgets & Gizmos

The FingerVU 706 is a 7″ 800x480 (16:10) external mini-monitor that connects over USB, but it’s not your run-of-the-mill external screen. For starters it’s a resistive touchscreen and it’s also a widget dock complete with its own user interface. It comes with a whole world of preconfigured widgets that show you weather, play music and videos, stream your RSS feeds, show the news and draw on the screen. You can add up to 625 widgets across 25 pages! The screen also has a UI for controlling the widgets via the touchscreen or the included a remote control.

The SyncBox is the kind of tool you don’t realise you need until you need it. Designed to let you transfer data from one USB device to another on the fly and without using a computer, the little pocket sized marvel is super perfect for things like transferring photos from your camera to a USB drive while you’re on vacation. Ahh…now you get the point eh? €31.90 and needs 3 AAA batteries

Computers come in many different flavors, but apparently that isn’t enough for everybody, and so to spice up the case modding a bit, this FIFA 10 PC case mod featured at the German Case Modding Championship has integrated a BBQ grill. Featuring Intel Core 2 Duo, motherboard socket 775, an ASUS ATI 4870 Grafkkarte with 1024MB RAM, a 4GB Corsair TwinX RAM, a 1000MB hard drive, a DVD burner, along with a mouse, keyboard and Windows Vista Home, this FIFA 10 PC case mod is sure make the anticipation reach an almost unbearable level before we get to see the real action in South Africa.

USB 3.0 is coming here and Brando has the goods. Starting with the perennial favourite, the SATA hard drive dock. This USB 3.0 SATA HDD Docking Station lets you hot-swap between multiple drives easily, and allows you transfer data at 5, 3 or 1.5 Gbs as well as the old USB 2.0/1.1 way. It can mount either 3.5″ or 2.5″ hard drives and supports drives up to 2TB in size. Only Windows XP/Vista/7 compatible and needs AC. US$58 from Brando.

The Philco PC redesigned by SchultzeWORKS. It was inspired by the 1950’s Philco Predicta, a design classic, as well as an eclectic mixture of modern minimalism, the steampunk movement, and antiques. As lead designer Dave Schultze explains, “The result is a design aesthetic that blends multiple elements of the familiar, but with some surprisingly fresh styling that just so happens to house a state-of-the-art Windows 7 PC.”

It has many fantastic designs, including a typewriter keyboard and a mirror like LCD screen...

The remarkable thing about this K2 Wristop Computer is not the fact that it combines a digital compass, altimeter, barometer, weather station, thermometer and digital timepiece in an acre of luscious black plastic. No. It’s the fact that the price of £12.40 (including free windshield mounting kit) makes something of a mockery of the new Suunto Elementum Terra which costs around the same as a small car for a similar specification.

The thing I love most about the marketing image for this KeyScan KS810 Color Scanner Keyboard is the fact that someone thought it was really really important to include the words ‘magazine not included’ on the page. I want you to close your eyes, lean back and digest with delight the thought of that conversation. I get goosebumps. $99.99.

This SATA HDD HDMI TV Player gives you a media PC in a box, just plug in a video-stocked SATA drive, it accepts 2.5″ or 3.5″ drives formatted with NTFS or FAT16/32. It outputs RCA AV, Component or 576p/1080i HDMI as well as 5.1 audio, so you’re bound to see and hear something you like. It will play MPEG1-4 including DivX/XviD, all the usual audio suspects and jpeg files. You can also play off SD/MMC or via USB and has the obligatory remote control. US$69.99

# Support AV/YPbPr/HDMI
# Support 5.1 Sound
# Using SD/MMC Card
# Support USB Host (External device like USB Flash Drive)

Now this is a good idea. Since optical media has pretty much failed to keep pace with our data storage needs, ditch the optical drives and replace them with a Triple 3.5″ SATA/SAS Hard Drive Dock.

The dock takes up two slots on a desktop PC and has room for three 3.5″ SATA or Serial Attached SCSI drives, each in a lockable enclosure and the bay comes with an integrated, silent 6cm fan. You could probably turn this into an instant RAID array too I’d imagine. US$149 from Brando.

The QOOQ (pronounced kook) is a kitchen computer that’s actually designed to withstand the rigours of being used in a kitchen. It’s a very stylish looking piece of kit that is part recipe book, part cooking show and part Filofax.