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Lenovo’s S10 netbook has been relatively well received since its introduction earlier this year, but the battery life has always been a bit of a sticking point, with the included 3-cell battery simply not meeting some folks’ netbook demands. It looks like that situation has now been rectified, in Germany, where a new model equipped with a six-cell battery has just gone on sale for the fairly reasonable price of €329 (or roughly $425). Unfortunately, there’s no indication of a release ’round these parts just yet, but you can check out some more pics of the somewhat bulky addition by hitting up the link below.

Filed under: Laptops

Lenovo S10 with six-cell battery gets pictured, priced originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seriously, it should be a Class 1 felony that there’s no way to buy this. Okay, so maybe that’s a stretch, but we can’t get over how genius this is. As the old adage asserts, the best solutions are spawned from the most perplexing quandaries, and when one hacker determined that two USB ports on his laptop simply weren’t enough, he figured out a way around it. Essentially, he utilized a VGA gender changer, a spare USB port and a bit of old fashioned solder work in order to transform an unwanted VGA connector into a power-only USB socket. Sure, the applications are limited, but are you really going to complain about an extra option for charging your cellphone / DAP / Darth Vader voice changer? No, no you are not.

[Via EverythingUSB]

Filed under: Peripherals

Conceptually simple hack turns VGA port into power-only USB socket originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In another example of companies catering to people that need to justify their anti-social behavior with a need for absolute silence, Yamaha is coming out with a simple one-person room called My Room II.

The new My Room is a soundproof block with all the amenities of a cardboard box, but with less room and a little bit more technology. Inside the Room, a touch panel control allows the user to control the air-conditioner and overall temperature, and comes with an embedded 66-watt fluorescent light. It’s also lined with a flame-proof carpet that further quiets the space.

We couldn’t find the decibel level the insulated panel walls can suppress, but if it’s presumably good enough to use as an office within an office as Yamaha suggests, it’s likely to be able to handle between 60 (normal conversations) and 80 decibels (city traffic).

But most critically, the room deludes the user into thinking about something other than the depressing fact that the human population is increasing to such a degree that suffocatingly tiny rooms are necessary to get some peace and quiet.

Overall, the popularity of miniaturized personal spaces is growing. Earlier this year, we featured mini houses that adjusted the American dream of owning a home down to a simple, spruced up RV shack featuring only the most necessary amenities.

Yamaha is not getting into the mini-house craze just yet, but they are also selling an even quieter personal room called the Cefine II. It’s a slightly larger room for jamming and practicing music, with better acoustics and thicker walls.

The My Room II is currently available in Japan for $6,500, and the Cefine II comes in at $15,000.

We’ll be frank — there’s nothing particularly elegant about the Wii64, but it is unique, so we just have to pay attention. Without any rhyme or reason, this here modder decided it best to gut the internals of his Wii and replace them with the innards of an N64. Of course, he could’ve just referenced someone else’s work for getting an N64 controller to play nice with Nintendo’s latest, but we suspect that just wasn’t the itch he was trying to scratch. The current bid is just $49.99, so those intrigued enough to actually have it shipped to their house can bid away.

[Via Nintendo Wii Fanboy]

Filed under: Gaming

Modder haphazardly shoves an N64 into a Wii shell originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Household

No, your eyes don’t deceive: it’s a Lego safe. Apparently Lego’s computer-equipped Mindstorms NXT can be used for something more practical than launching robots into space (great as that was), and believe it or not, this box is actually kind of secure. Five double digit codes protect your valuables, and the dial goes both ways, so there’s a left and right entry for each number — hence, over 305 billion possible combinations. Moving the safe will trip motion sensors and set off an alarm, and bars inside strengthen the structure, so while master diamond thieves won’t be deterred, surreptitious little siblings might. Video after the break, and check the right nav through the read link to dig up building instructions.

[Via Digg]

Lego safe is made from robot parts, will guard your mint condish Robocop figurines just nicely originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Household

Few devices receive as much attention to re-design as the mousetrap and alarm clock. Regarding the latter, Anupam Patahak, a Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Michigan, takes a natural light approach with his Rise and Shine Alarm Shades. At a predefined time, the modified alarm clock silently (or noisily) kicks off a servo to wind open the shades. Nothing like the deep, battleship gray skies of mid-western suburbia to rouse a young mind from sleep. Video after the break.

[Via Hack A Day]

Continue reading Video: Rise and Shine alarm hack is sheers genius

Video: Rise and Shine alarm hack is sheers genius originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Laptops

It’s been forever and a day since we heard from Dospara, but as it typically does, it’s just hanging around and waiting to see what catches on before it dives in. Case in point: here we have the Prime Note Cartina UM, an 8.9-inch netbook that’s hitting alongside the second and third iteration of everyone else’s. You could likely guess the specifications in your sleep, but we’ll humor you anyway; we’ve got a 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, 120GB hard drive, a 1,024 x 600 panel, 802.11b/g WiFi, a battery good for two hours and a mysterious Linux build pre-installed. You won’t find an optical drive bundled in, but you will find a ¥39,980 ($413) price tag should you venture over to Japan.

[Via Liliputing]

Dospara doles out Atom-powered Prime Note Cartina UM netbook originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here at the G-Lab we love Make, the magazine for hackers, modders and DIY freaks. And, by extension, we dig Makezine, the online home of the mag. Sometimes the projects are a little too ambitious (DIY DNA sequencing, anyone?) but once in a while there is a true gem, a project so cool that you can’t not do it.

The Scanner Camera is one of those projects. It’s a perfect destination for your useless scanner and better still, it’s reversible, meaning you can always go back to scanning boring old pieces of paper.

The video shows you just what to do: essentially you tape a 7″x7″ black box the the top of an old flatbed, fit a magnifying-glass lens into a smaller box and slide that inside, and then punch a few different sized holes into black cards to use as apertures.

That’s it. The image is focussed by moving the inner box in and out, and the light levels can be controlled with the black cards. The images are amazing, and best of all, if you have a Canon LiDE scanner like the one in the video, it’s powered from the USB bus so you could even hook this up to a laptop and go shooting outside.

I will be trying this out over the next few days. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Weekend Project: Scanner Camera [Make via Lifehacker]

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds

If you’re the type who looks at the Pandora and scoffs at the simplicity, you’ll find oodles to adore in the Meggy Jr RGB. Deemed the “little sister” of the Peggy LED display kit, this gaming handheld from Evil Mad Science is only as fun as you make it; in other words, it provides all the incentive you need to sharpen those programming skills in order to craft engrossing pixel-based titles. The portable unit packs a fully addressable 8 x 8 RGB LED matrix display, a lo-fi audio transducer and plenty of buttons for controlling the action. The unit comes pre-loaded with a single game (isn’t that sweet?), but from there, it’s up to you to put those soldering / coding skills to good use. Claim yours now for $65 to $95 — just be ready to deal with loads of frustration on your way to homegrown handheld nirvana.

[Via Engadget German]

Meggy Jr RGB handheld: only as fun as your programming skills allow originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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