I’ve always wanted to try a graphics tablet and was appreciative when Genius was willing to send me a G-Pen M609X to review and then continue using. When I opened the box I was immediately impressed. The tablet looks good, is well designed and, while light, feels quite sturdy.

I’ve been using it for a while now and have to say it is rather impressive. Costing just under $110 at Walmart, it is priced far more competitively than many of the Wacom tablets (the small Bamboo pen tablet is currently $230 at Amazon while offering excellent and versatile functionality.

Let’s take a look…

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Anyone remember a time when Pocket PCs came with proper styli? They were thicker, stronger, and most importantly they didn’t fold up like a picnic blanket.

These days manufacturers have been stealing space from the old stylus slot to cram ever more stuff into their devices. While I understand they are under pressure to make stuff thinner and smaller, they need to consider how it compromises usability in the process.

I’ve really come to notice this stylus origami since trying to ink on the HTC Shift and the Fujitsu U1010. They include these tiny little toothpicks reminiscent of the CLIE styli that are too thin, too light and they are constantly collapsing when you use them! The Shift has the added excitement of an overly sensitive touchscreen that makes getting that tiny pointer onto the screen (without brushing your hand on the screen) very difficult.

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I just missed posting this review in time for Texas’ Spring Break, but it should still be timely for everyone who plans on traveling this summer. I’ll warn you now though, in order to use this product you’ll need to give up one of your vehicle’s cup-holders.

Why would I ask for something so uncivilized?

Because by giving up a cup-holder you might just gain the means to charge up to three devices at the same time, all from a single cigar lighter or power port.

Intrigued? I was, which is how I came to be in possession of the Targus 100W Auto Power Inverter.

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I have a weakness for small leather goods. I love bags and pouches and cases more than your average bear. (Wow! It feels good to get that off my chest.)

As a leather lover, I have long been aware of Vaja and the magnificent cases they make. My problem has always been that I never seem to have a phone that is popular enough with other people to make it worth Vaja’s while to create a custom case. (Check out their i-volution cases…they are to die for!)

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One of most laptop’s main limitations is their battery life, which can usually only be relied upon for a few hours. This hindrance is never more evident that when traveling, because finding a place to recharge in airports and train stations can be a major challenge. On January 1, 2008, carrying extended batteries will become a little bit trickier when traveling by plane, but it can still be done as long as the extra battery is packed in your carry-on luggage (versus in your checked luggage) and it is under a certain size.

Copied verbatim from the US Government’s Safe Travel site:

The following quantity limits apply to both your spare and installed batteries. The limits are expressed in grams of “equivalent lithium content.” 8 grams of equivalent lithium content is approximately 100 watt-hours. 25 grams is approximately 300 watt-hours.

Debating the effectiveness of the new rules is a discussion best left for another day, but in the meantime the Proporta Portable Laptop Battery can be combined with other electronic devices carried while keeping the owner in compliance with these new rules (it holds 66.6Wh). Let’s see if carrying one would be worth the bother…

Look at those smudges! I swear it only looks like this under my photography lamps!

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One of my favourite gadget blogs is jkOnTheRun, and in James’ latest post, he discusses one of the quandaries of being a gadget reviewer: which one(s) do I take with me today?

Once I decided to bring a full-sized Tablet PC with me I had to decide between the Fujitsu P1610, the Lenovo x61 and the HP 2710p. The P1610 was my first choice being smaller and lighter than the other two but since my work was going to be writing I felt the smaller keyboard of the P1610 might not be the best choice. I can touch type fine on the Fuji but for extended touch typing sessions the small keyboard can get a little uncomfortable so I decided a bigger device would better serve me this time. I thought about bringing the Lenovo with me because it’s such a sweet, fast device but it’s also the biggest of all these devices and I’d have to bring a bigger gear bag than I wanted. That would entail having to transfer anything in my smaller gear bag to the larger one and that’s a hassle for a simple trip to the coffee shop. The HP 2710p is a fast and smaller Tablet so I decided to take that one for this trip.

My dilemma’s actually a different one – not so much which device I bring (as I tend to standardise on one particular device of each type for weeks – even months – at a time), but how many. If I could get away with it, I’d bring them all with me, in which case I’d need a small shopping trolley to carry them all! My iPod and/or Zune for listening to music, Artie for writing, surfing the Net and playing Scrabulous, my Nokia N95, my Canon EOS 40D for taking photos, my Panasonic HDC-SD1 for shooting video, my Canon M80 for backing up my camera’s memory card, my Nintendo DS Lite for playing games and – of course – my Battery Geek Portable Power Station to keep everything charged.

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While at CES, Matt Miller (aka The Mobile Gadgeteer) and I were invited to a private dinner at Morton’s Steakhouse with Neuros Audio. The evening’s star attraction was the then unreleased OSD, which turned out to be one of the most amazing video capture devices I have ever seen.

“The Neuros OSD will allow you to record, play, stream and share your video and audio content between all your electronic devices: your entertainment center (TV, stereo, DVD player, VCR, camcorder, etc), your PC/Internet and your portables (iPod, smartphones, PSP, etc).”

Yesterday a brand new Neuros showed up on my doorstep; this is its unboxing…

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I have had my MacBook Pro for about 6 months now, and for the most part I have been very happy with it. The one issue that has been with it from the beginning is battery life. While it may be quite a powerful laptop, the 2.5hrs battery life (I have seen less more than once) is just plain slack. Due to the design of the MBP an extended battery isn’t really practical either as it would be a rather awkward hump in the middle of the laptop.

There is a solution however. It might not be the most elegant of solutions, but it certainly gets the job done, and provides an amazing boost in battery life. It comes from a company called BatteryGeek, who pride themselves in powering your devices far beyond their standard time.

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I bought a brand new Toshiba Satellite A-105 laptop in late September 2006, and by the time my new Fujitsu T4215 had arrived in mid-January, I had already managed to start wearing the left leg off of the Toshiba keyboard’s silk-screened “A” button. I have no idea what my problem is, but I am really hard on keyboards; I have commented before that I must just bang on the keys or something, because it is common for the regularly used keys to eventually lose their label.

While this might not be a huge issue on the typical desktop keyboard (”Hey, it’s looking pretty worn – time for a new one! Yay!“), it can be a rather costly problem on a not-as-easily-replaced laptop’s keyboard. The best option, for me at least, is to try to hook the laptop up to a separate keyboard. so that I can bang away. This has worked well in the past, more noticeably when the new keyboard was paired with some sort of docking system that also raised the laptop’s screen, added USB ports on the back, and managed to keep the laptop cool at the same time.

While I was still using the Toshiba, I saw an announcement for the upcoming Logitech Alto notebook stand, which would not only raise the laptop screen to a more ergonomic height, it also had the distinction of being the first portable or stationary notebook stand that I could remember ever seeing with a built-in keyboard. Intrigued, I knew I would have to give this thing a try; at the end of January, I received a review sample.

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Since Judie has posted her review, and doesn’t feel that the Fabric Keyboard is for her, she has decided to offer it to Gear Diary readers. All you have to do is answer one simple question and the keyboard is yours!

“What is the famous Star Trek saying that was never actually said on screen?”

Beam Me Up Scotty!

Congratulations Bob Russell!! You were first to comment with the answer, and have won yourself one slightly used (but excellent condition) Fabric Bluetooth Keyboard!!

[Ed. note: this review picks up where the Unboxing left off. If you haven't already read it, read the i.Tech Virtual Keyboard Unboxing first.]

This past month with the i.Tech Bluetooth Virtual Keyboard has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for me. During this time, I have managed to learn way more about Bluetooth Stacks and Windows XP Service Pack 2 upgrades than I ever wanted to know…but I’m getting ahead of myself already, and we wouldn’t want that…

As many of you will recall from my previously posted unboxing, the Virtual Keyboard (VKB) is a futuristic gadget that uses a red laser to beam a virtual keyboard upon any flat surface. Its body is primarily composed of matte black plastic, and its shiny plastic front is where all of the magic happens. The VKB measures 3.7? tall x 1.4? wide x 1.1? thick , and it weighs 3.1 ounces. On its front is a long black glossy panel which covers the keyboard sensing receiver window. Directly above this area is the red clear plastic covered keyboard projection window.

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Since I am about to become a Tablet PC owner (Fujitsu T4215, thank you for asking), I have been paying especially close attention to sites that feature Tablet PC hints, tips and accessory reviews. Well, here’s a contest for current and future Tablet PC or UMPC owners to enter!

GottaBeMobile is giving away a Grab Bag which contains:

• 1 – Linksys 8 port switch – brand new, unopened
• 7 – Microsoft Mobile PC Development styluses
  • Watch Rob’s InkShow on Pens and Styluses, where he demos the Mobile PC development stylus
• 5 – The Impact of Tablet PCs and Pen-Based Technology on Education books, which is the collection of papers presented at WIPTE in April 2006.
• 2 – Channel 9 guys
• 5 – yet unannounced special GBM swag that will only be available at CES! Look for a special announcement on this piece of swag soon.

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Chris at unbox.it has posted pictures and commentary from Vincent’s unboxing of the brand new Etymotic Research ety8 In-The-Ear-Bluetooth Earphones.

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**This contest is now closed, and the winner is Civisi. Thank you for participating and please watch for more contests soon!**

How would you like to score a lightly used* i.Tech Bluetooth Virtual Keyboard?

Thanks to the generosity of Golan Technology, one lucky Gear Diary reader will do just that; here’s how…

Reply in this thread with the name of your favorite Science Fiction movie or book, and include a sentence or two telling why it’s your favorite.

Added later: TV shows are fine! Keep them coming!!

The i.Tech VKB review is slated for posting on January 15th, so I’ll plan on announcing the winner at 5:30 pm, US Central Standard Time on January 16th.

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The i.Tech Bluetooth Virtual Keyboard has been on my list of must-try items ever since I first heard about it – which if I remember correctly was in 2003!

The first time I saw pictures of a keyboard which worked by beaming a red�laser display on any flat surface, my inner geek did a happy dance! This is a product that looks like came straight out of a Philip K. Dick novel, out of a Star Trek episode, out of a…you get the picture.

Like many new technologies, the VKB had a few false-starts and took longer to appear than I had hoped. I’ve�read the horror stories from its early days (2004 – 2005)�- of typing without tactile feedback, of not having the proper driver for the necessary device, of needing to get the angle “just so” for the keyboard sensors to pick up correctly, and worse – that the product would only work in optimal lighting.

Well, there was only one way to find out if this keyboard was the hotness, or just a cranky diva in disguise – I would need to try one for myself!

Recently Golan Technology, the US distributor of the VKB, offered me the chance to�try out�this futuristic keyboard. A full review is scheduled for January 15th, but in the meantime I wanted to share the unboxing photos with you…

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