We all know Christmas is coming. Jeans are already getting a little tighter as the festive excess starts to show.
We also know that a few weeks from now we’ll be making silly New Year’s resolutions and dusting off our trainers. What better way to help you get fit again than another gadget. Maybe just ditch the trainers and buy the gadget anyway.
Sennheiser has just updated its popular CX 300 earphones with the CX 400 cans, boasting a number of improvements. Available in a variety of colours – black, white, silver, red and blue – the CX 400 promise better bass, greater clarity and improved dynamics.
For your £55, you get a short cable, a 1m extension cable, a pouch and three sizes of ear adapter.
For £60, you can plump for the CXL 400, which adds an integrated neck lanyard to hold a mobile phone or MP3 player.-Martin Lynch
[Sennheiser]
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As if having a gazillion speed cameras wasn’t enough, UK motorists caught jabbering away on the mobile phone – or smoking at the wheel – could be locked up for as long as two years according to new guidelines drawn up by the Crown Prosecution Service.
The new policy on bad driving has been set up to address not just what constitutes careless driving but also to outline a clear set of charges so that bereaved families have a better shot at justice against drivers that cause death on the roads.
It is likely that the charge of manslaughter will be used more often. Here’s an example of what will constitute various types of bad driving.
Dangerous driving could include:
* racing or competitive driving;
* disregarding warnings from fellow passengers;
* reading a newspaper/map;
* aggressive driving, such as sudden lane changes, cutting into a line of vehicles, or driving much too close to the vehicle in front;
Careless driving could include:
* driving inappropriately close to another vehicle;
* tuning a car radio;
* selecting and lighting a cigarette or similar where the driver was avoidably distracted by that use.
Inconsiderate driving could include:
* flashing of lights to force other drivers in front to give way;
* unnecessarily remaining in an overtaking lane;
* driving with un-dipped headlights which dazzle oncoming drivers;
* driving through a puddle causing pedestrians to be splashed;
* driving a bus in such a way as to alarm passengers.
Driving through a puddle? C’mon.-Martin Lynch
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Samsung has announced a skinny 17in laptop designed to be used easily with your skinny HDTV.
The forthcoming R700 is the latest in the company's Aura range and along with its slinky glossy black looks, it sports an HDMI port so that you can easily attach it to your HDTV - something that's not all that common now but will become a lot more so in 2008. No more messing with DVI-to-HDMI-to-Component cable adapter nonsense.
The 17in display is capable of a 1440 x 900 resolution, memory ranges from 512MB to 4GB, hard drives run to 250GB and the graphics are handled by a decent GeForce 8400 GS chip. There’s an in-built 1.3MP camera for videoconferencing with work when you’re pretending to work from home and a dual-layer DVD burner.
There are a generous 4 USB ports and an always useful 7-in-1 card reader. No news on what chips are powering this thing but it runs Vista Premium and prices will start at around £500-600 when it lands in February.-Martin Lynch
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The PS3 is finally starting to shape up as a true next-gen console and home entertainment box with today’s addition of support for the DivX format – the most popular compression technology used for Web-based video.
It was promised last month and now it’s here for Christmas, allowing us all to use the PS3 for watching those compressed TV shows and movies we downloaded off the Web. The support comes as part of the new Version 2.1 firmware update, which will allow owners to stream DivX files from their PCs to the PS3 via its Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) technology. In addition to DivX support, the PS3 now supports videos in VC-1 format, including WMV content.
The other key enhancement has been the upgrade of the Blu-ray software to Blu-ray Disc (BD) Profile 1.1, making it one of the first players capable of supporting advanced features like secondary video and audio decoders for picture-in-picture viewing and interactive audio commentary.
The Xbox 360 is expected to get DivX support too although Sony gets the gold medal for being first. [UPDATE: I'm wrong, Xbox snatched DivX gold a few weeks ago - thanks for the heads-up Ruler, Directhex]
As we reported, Sony also launched the 3.80 firmware for the PSP, bringing support for more than 22,000 Internet radio stations via Wi-Fi.-Martin Lynch
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Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
Contributor | Tamlin Magee
