LabRats #010-4: Viva Las Vegas!


PowerSquid

Intel has now got into home-theatre electronics, and their newest device is called Viiv. Why people invent gadgets that do all the work for you so you can only sit and watch or listen or both is difficult to explain. To many, it might even be killing the fun part of fighting high technology and hopefully emerging victorious. Still, apparently the majority of humankind believe that laziness is the mother of progress. Ergo: Viiv.

Power strip isn’t good enough any longer. So, here comes the PowerSquid. Why? Well, most of the electronic paraphernalia we buy these days come with power transformers, bulky boxes that take up all the space you can have on a power bar, and then some. PowerSquid is basically the work of a genius, simple and efficient: the outlets look like arms of an octopus, so you can attach as many transformers as you please and not have to look for free space or add yet another power bar.

Do you really want to know where you are, at all times? Some of us do. So what? Just another GPS device, right? Boring, right? Come to think of it, not really. How about having it as part of your phone? Besides, one of the selling points is that it can be programmed so it not only tells you where you are but also where you want to be. You can, if you are either a gourmet or a gourmand, teach the device about your favourite eateries and then only tell it that you’re hungry … and it will direct you precisely where you want to go. Of course, it takes the process of thinking completely out of the equation, but who wants to think on an empty stomach, anyhow?

And then there is the Maxtor’s new storage box that carries a terrabyte of information. For those who want to know what that is, it equals a thousand of gigabytes. Big enough for you?

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