When we had the downright magnificent opportunity to toy with Philips’ latest PMP line here in the States, we immediately noticed that the GoGear Opus stood out among the rest. The crew over at TrustedReviews recently spent some quality time with the 8GB version of that very unit, and while they found the audio quality to be “excellent,” they seemed rather disappointed — if not irked — by everything else in the package. For starters, the whole solution just felt boring, with critics noting that its biggest problem was a lack of “excitement.” Granted, none of this would matter at a rock-bottom price point, but for $100, there’s an awful lot of competition. As we found during our short time with the player, these folks also noticed that the user interface was simply “old-fashioned,” and that video playback was nothing to write home about. The bottom line? Unless you score some kind of spectacular deal, your PMP dollars are probably best spent elsewhere.

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Philips GoGear Opus reviewed: solid audio, but painfully boring originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 May 2009 18:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AFP – Videogame makers are defying horrid economic times with an annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) brimming with blockbuster titles and unbridled pizzazz.

Here is the original:
Blockbuster videogame line-up to spark E3 magic
(AFP)

PC World – Forget E3 and WWDC, we’re getting all the info we need straight from the source: China.

View original here:
Is this the Next iPhone?
(PC World)

Look, we fully understand that September 5th is a long ways out, but don’t think for a second that Microsoft isn’t inking every last detail of its Zune HD launch in stone. That said, Windows expert and all-around good guy Paul Thurrott has been “told” that this very player will ship exactly on the fifth day of the ninth month of this year. Needless to say, that jibes with Microsoft’s official line (“this fall“), but sadly, we’ve no other information to go on at the moment. In other words, feel free to pencil this one in, but keep that eraser handy — cool?

[Via Zune Boards, thanks Joel]

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Microsoft’s Zune HD shipping on September 5th? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 May 2009 17:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Look, LED light bulbs are fanciful, great for Ma Earth and a fine addition to any home, barber shop or underground fight club. But let’s be honest — even the guy that bikes through blizzards to get to work and wears garb that he grew in his basement isn’t apt to shell out $120 a pop to have what’s likely the most efficient light bulb American dollars can buy. Enter Chunlei Guo from the University of Rochester, who has helped discover a process which could morph a traditional incandescent light bulb into a beacon of burning light without using nearly as much energy as before. In fact, his usage of the femtosecond laser pulse — which creates a “unique array of nano- and micro-scale structures on the surface of a regular tungsten filament” — could enable a bulb to increase output efficiency in order to emit 100-watts worth of light while sucking down less than 60-watts of power. Per usual, there’s no telling when this new hotness is likely to hit the commercial realm, but one’s thing for sure: we bet GE’s paying attention.

[Via Physorg]

Filed under: Household

Ultra-powerful laser could make incandescent light bulbs more efficient originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 May 2009 16:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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