Review: Walkman Phone Nails Form, Fails Function
Sony Ericsson W350 You’ve lusted after your high-school crush for two semesters, and you’ve finally got a date. But now that you’ve alone time, every feature that you found cute or enticing shows a transparency, a shallowness. As you…

Sony Ericsson W350

You’ve lusted after your high-school crush for two semesters, and you’ve finally got a date. But now that you’ve alone time, every feature that you found cute or enticing shows a transparency, a shallowness. As you spend time together, the very things you liked begin to grate on your nerves, and new discoveries show how ill fit you are for each other. That’s how it goes — and that’s how it is with the Sony Ericsson W350: What appeared to be a cool little phone proved itself to be an annoyance and a hassle to use.

Not that it doesn’t look good. The W350 has style to spare. Sleek and petite, this Walkman phone is dwarfed by an average hand, slimmer and narrower than most candy-bar handsets. The matte-black surface is accented by metallic trim and Walkman-style navigation controls. A small flip panel that houses the controls opens to reveal a keypad composed of glossy Chiclets and a squared-off oval navigation pad.

Though pretty, these design touches are the most irritating features of the phone. The smooth keys are hard to press in isolation. The navpad leaves tiny room for simple navigation — you’ll often press the “up” button when you mean to press the center “select” button, opening the wrong menu item or application. And the flimsy flip panel takes great skill to open one-handedly, which makes it bad for efficient answering.

And the Sony influence brings frustration in new forms. The proprietary headphone connector is ungainly, jutting from the side awkwardly and removing any trace of grace from the unit. The phone comes with what looks like a 512MB microSD card. But wait — it’s Sony’s own memory card, the incompatible Memory Stick M2. When was the last time you’ve seen any Memory Stick slots in a non-Sony notebook?

Call quality was muffled, but we tested a prototype, so that could improve before the final version ships. Don’t forget to lock the phone after each call, because when it’s flipped shut, the phone defaults to Walkman mode, and a key in your pocket could begin an impromptu jam session in a company meeting. In our case it was the lone provided song, an electronica instrumental that sounded like hold music or the background track to a ’90s sexual harassment training video.

On the bright side, when this phone comes out, it’ll be cheap, around $29 with a two year contract. It seems you can also buy unlocked versions of this handset now for about $200, but why on earth would you?

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Oops. O2 prematurely posted details of its UK Pay & Go plan, realizing the mistake soon after and pulling the page. Sadly, despite the amount of coverage this is getting, nobody thought to take a screen shot. Mac Rumors has,…

Oops. O2 prematurely posted details of its UK Pay & Go plan, realizing the mistake soon after and pulling the page. Sadly, despite the amount of coverage this is getting, nobody thought to take a screen shot. Mac Rumors has, however, posted details of the tariffs, which look both reasonable and realistic.

The handsets will be £300 ($590) and £360 ($710). This price includes six months of unlimited data use. After that, it will cost you £10 per month for unlimited data, with various Pay & Go tariffs on top. These are typically arcane, and require a copy of both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Rosetta Stone to decipher. Look:

To be clear, these are the normal Pay & Go rates, not iPhone-specific, but they give you a taste of what the UK customer has to deal with. And while the details from Mac Rumors are unverified, the handset prices seem about right, and if that $20 a month for unlimited data is true, it’s a veritable bargain.

Product page [O2 via Mac Rumors]

Via [wired.com]

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HybRed Personal computer Casemod Gives the iMac a Severe Inferiority Complex [Casemod]

Before we get into the details of this compact HybRed Personal computer casemod from modder Ville “Willek” Kyrö, let’s set the scene, shall we? An iMac sits comfortably at a local coffee shop, its wifi at 100%, eagerly sucking down megabytes of the latest Natasha Bedingfield mp3 from iTunes when all of a sudden, the HybRed bursts through the door and orders *gulp* a medium coffee, black, and pays with cash! Que the scratching record as the iMac wets itself and shorts out. And… scene. More seriously, the all-in-one design is really all the Hybred shares with the iMac, because as you’ll see this is one serious gaming rig.

Inside the glowing custom-built aluminum chassis of the HybRed Gaming Personal computer is an Athlon64 3500+ CPU. Graphics are handled by an nVidia GeForce 6800GT on a PCI-e bus. The power supply, as you can see, is kept separate in its own illuminated case. Red LEDs (HybRed, get it?) keep the rig illuminated when the lights go down low. [Metku Mods via Technabob]

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MSI Wind Running Mac OS X Also Thinks It’s a Mac Pro [Cheap Mac OS X]

It’s not even out yet and people have already hacked Mac OS X to run on the MSI Wind. Like with other non-Apple Leopard boxes, the tiny personal believes it is a Mac Pro, which is OK because we all want to be Mac Pros when we grow up. This version is still lacking some fine tuning, but it runs quite well according to Insanely Mac forum member Jav:

Well, here it is. The new MSI Wind running Kalyway 10.5.2 (modified Leopard install). I still have to make some small adjustments, like the resolution and the wireless network card, but I couldn’t resist posting these images that I’m sure will get the interest of more than one person. Ethernet and Bluetooth work right out of the box, so I’m really expecting a lot from this small notebook. — Translated from Spanish

I like the idea of a $399 mini-notebook running Leopard at full capacity. [Insanely Mac Forum — In Spanish 2-Germans 0 — Gracias Perico!]

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Review: Porsche Branded Racing Wheel is Almost Superior Than the Real Thing
Fanatec Porsche 911 Turbo Racing Wheel If you’re a racing sim fan who completely needs Porsche branded gear, Fanatec’s Porsche 911 Turbo Wheel is not a bad place to start. It’s a sturdy piece of equipment, that, when clamped onto…

Fanatec Porsche 911 Turbo Racing Wheel

If you’re a racing sim fan who absolutely needs Porsche branded gear, Fanatec’s Porsche 911 Turbo Wheel isn’t a bad place to begin. It’s a sturdy piece of equipment, that, when clamped onto a desk, feels as solid as it might if nestled firmly onto a dashboard. It does come with a pair of “lap wings” for the couch-inclined, but you’ll only look ridiculous and feel uncomfortable if you’re not operating this on a steady surface.

Wrapped in hand-stitched leather, the fine trim is marred by flimsy plastic buttons adorning the center of the wheel – a petty complaint, but justified by the price tag and “Porsche quality standards.” Nitpicking aside, the wheel is solidly built, as are the pedals that accompany it. A metal plate keeps the pedals rooted in place, and offers stability as you’re gliding expertly (or mashing frantically) about the race track.

The wheel is linked wirelessly by a USB dongle to your PS3 or PC (sorry 360 fans). To get the full effect, including full 900 degree rotations and jarring vibrations on the wheel during less successful turns, you’ll need to race in a title that supports force feedback wheels (for the Computer, we went with rFactor).

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Matrox Reappears With Multi-Display Graphics Card Line For Professional Apps [Graphics Cards]

In the battle for video card domination, dark horse Matrox never seemed to even come close to keeping up with Nvidia and ATI’s crazy GPU arms race. But after fading almost absolutely from the gadgetsphere, the company has suddenly returned with the launch of five new graphics cards under its “M-Series” line. The M-Series targets the multi-display market and consists of two low-profile PCIe cards and three standard formate ATX PCIe cards.

The cards range from $259 for the M9120 PCIe x16, which has a single DVI-I output that uses a breakout cable to run two independent displays, to the $599 M9140 LP PCIe x16, which can power up to four 1920 x 1200 screens.

Judging from the pricing and features no regular person would need, it seems that Matrox has bypassed the home consumer market in favor of “professional” applications. That’s probably a smart move, considering how even Intel is having trouble wrestling control of the market away from our two graphics chip overlords now. [The Inquirer via Crunch Gear]

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Well, the time has come. It’s 6 p.m., and according to the Bill Gates’ retirement video, this is the exact moment Bill is leaving from his last day of work. With this monumental occasion, we thought it was only fitting we send him off with an MSN e-card. Feel free to give your best wishes to Bill in the comments. [Bill Gates’ Retirement Celebration on Giz]

Via [gizmodo]

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Sweety is Color-Changing, Squeezable Interactive Stress Gizmo [Stress Relief]

Designer Haishu Zhang has created the Sweety concept gadget to help soothe away people’s stresses. Apparently he’s designed to be your 24-hour listener, so I guess you just sound-off in his direction rather than at a real person. And Sweety reacts with graphic patterns and color changes that, um, help you somehow. I’m a tiny confused how that bit’s supposed to work, but I do understand it’s interactive mode: when the rage hits you, you can just wrestle and pound the tiny bugger’s soft body. And that’s therapy. [Yanko design]

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Going one better than the Jesus model (the original, not Giz’s resident LEGO freak and sexy boy Diaz) is the Konepan, a bread maker from japanese toy manufacturer Megahouse. The kitchen gizmo, aimed at children and recently-retired Giz writers, can turn your dough into 14 different shapes, most of them crazy, all of them fabulous. Teddy bears, elephants, hemmorhoids a bunch of grapes, snails, and what looks like an angry squirrel, take just 13 minutes to cook once you’ve followed the instructions of how to make them. No clue as to how much the Komepan costs, however. [Megahouse via TOKYOMANGO]

Via [gizmodo]

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