Awesome Gadgets

A mix of open-source goodness and flashing lights, Monome is like a mixer that interacts with you; its buttons are largely trivial, but that hasn’t stopped it from developing an active community.

While its 858×600 resolution and 800:1 contrast ratio aren’t anything special, Dell’s M109s Projector is targeted towards road warriors: it measures only 4″x4″ and weighs less than a pound.

LIke Toshiba’s X306, the 17″ Asus G71 gaming laptop is one of the first to sport a quad core CPU; it also has a 512MB GeForce 9700M GT card and supports up to two 500 GB drives.

Asus’ liquid-cooled CG6155 desktop has a pretty tight case, but it’s the nForce 790i mobo that takes the cake, with 3-Way SLI and up to 8 GB DDR3 RAM. It even packs a fingerprint scanner.

Wanna kick your Canon 5D MKII or Nikon D90’s HD video recording up a notch? Redrock Micro is releasing a “Cinematizing Kit” that will add pro-level zoom + focus controls and a lens hood.

Now available: Sony’s James Bond 007 edition Vaio TT is a tiny, stealthy affair, with an 11″ screen, 64GB SSD and HDMI out; it’s wrapped in carbon fiber with an engraved 007 Gun Logo.

Miu’s Hybrid Dual Portable Computer is both a cellphone and a netbook with an Intel Atom CPU. It features a two-sided screen with a 4.1″ TFT on one side and a 2.4″ AMOLED on the other.

MSI’s latest gaming laptops, the 17″ GT735 and the 15″ GX630, both run on AMD Turion dual-core CPUs; the GT735 gets a Radeon HD 3850 while the GX630 gets a GeForce 9600M GT.

Available in black or with a mirror polish, the AeroSystem iPod Dock is a freestanding speaker with an integrated amp, 45 W subwoofer and a pair of 20 W tweeters; it’s available in Europe only.

This ain’t your normal case mod: not only is this Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3 fitted with carbon fiber, digital camo and a laser-cut logo, but it’s actually signed by Hideo Kojima himself.

Garish pink case aside, Toshiba’s 17″ X306-Q708 gaming laptop packs a quad-core CPU; it also gets NVIDIA’s new GeForce 9400M chipset + dual 512 MB GeForce 9800M GTS cards.

AT&T’s Samsung Epix is actually a third-gen Blackjack; the WinMo 6.1 smartphone gets a touchscreen and an optical mouse pad. Also included are Wi-Fi, aGPS, a 2MP camera and 3G.

The Motorola Aura is a love-it or hate-it swiveling luxury phone, with a HAL-like cyclops display protected by a 62-carat sapphire lens; the case itself is made from polished stainless steel.

Hardcore PC’s Reactor is truly hardcore: the $11k monster is filled with cooling oil; the motherboard and three Samsung SSDs are dropped in like nuclear fuel rods. Thanks, Jorge!

Gateway’s MC Series of laptops is the latest entrant to the 16″ / 16:9 arena; this movie-friendly notebook also sports HDMI out, a backlit keyboard and leather accents; Blu-ray is optional.

Forget HDD: DosPara’s Prime SSD-RAID Server features solid state drives on a RAID 0 array, with 1119 MB/s read and 442 MB/s write. It also sports a Core 2 Duo CPU and 4GB of RAM.