Gadget Castle

It may be the company that has taken the gadget world by storm and rewritten the rules for success in the world of technology; it may have got the whole world talking and raving about its products and the quality of its technology; and it may outsell all the competition put together; but I still think Apple and its i-prefixed products are overrated, not to mention overpriced. And the reasons I wouldn’t buy from Apple are:

• Too expensive: Forget the fact that Apple’s products are overhyped and overrated – if I were to include these reasons on my list, people would say I was prejudiced and biased and actually envious of the company’s “impressive” track record in the sales and publicity department. The bottom line is that all gadgets that have names prefixed with the letter i are overpriced, sometimes even costing double what a competitor’s product costs. To illustrate further, an iPod nano with a 2.2 inch screen costs around $150 while a similar MP3 player from a reputable competitor with a larger screen and more features costs just one third of this.
• Not standardized: Ever tried copying your songs from your iPod to your computer or to any other MP3 player? If you have, you would have racked your brains to find where and how your songs have been stored. Apple does not allow you to move your songs easily because they believe in copyrights and licences, right Mr. Jobs? Well, any product that is not standardized to interact with other gadgets is just not my cup of tea.
• Lack ordinary features: The iPod has no microphone, FM radio, or recording facility and cannot be used as a mass storage device like most other MP3 players of its calibre. Also, there was no support for MMS or video on early iPhones and  early models of the iPod did not feature a Search option. The latest product from the house of Apple, the iPad, lacks video playback or the ability to multitask, and it also does not feature a USB port or a camera, all of which are pretty much the norm for any gadget today.
• There is less tech support: So you claim your Mac is much more superior to the lowly PC with its horrid Windows OS, but if anything does go wrong, how much tech support do you have? With the more popular Windows OS, every Tom, Dick and Harry in tech support can talk you through a troubleshooting session blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their backs. A Mac on the other hand is a killer when it comes to figuring out why your screen just went completely black.
• Feature instant upgrades: Why buy Apple today when you’re going to be hit in the face a month or so later with an upgraded product that is much cheaper than the one you were suckered into buying? Ask any Apple gadget owner with a grouse and they’ll tell you their story. It makes no sense to hype your product, get customers to buy them, and then revamp it almost immediately and bring down the price just because your sales figures are poor.

So yes, even though my Windows may crash at times and I curse Bill Gates and Microsoft, there’s just no way I’m going the Apple way.

By-line:

This guest post is contributed by Barbara Williams, she writes on the topic of Computer Technician Programs . Email her at:  barbara.williams07@gmail.com .

Few days back Apple released it’s tablet, iPad and created sensation all across the world. I see everyone talking about its feature so interestingly. Many, by now might be knowing its feature, but you should be aware of its lack of support to many stuff. Today I would like to take this time up writing  about its disadvantages. Here are some of the disadvantages of iPad, which could let you wait for its successor.

No Support To Flash Player: iPad doesn’t support Flash player, so you will not be able to play most of the videos online or play games which uses flash. Of course it will let you play YouTube videos. As many of the websites uses flash player to view their content, this can be a big drawback.

No Multi-tasking: One of the big disadvantage of iPad is its nonexistence of multi-tasking. Multi-tasking is one of the key future of the modern day devices, iPad’s nonexistence of multi-tasking gets me amazed. So, if you are playing a game and quickly want to browse a website, then the only option you have is: to close the game application and browse. That means you cannot let your application run in the background.

Lack Of Webcam: Yet another strong disadvantage of iPad. Its so hard to believe that the device developed for the people who like browsing doesn’t support video conference. You cannot use webcam while using instant messenger. It will not let you grab a picture for your personal blog.

No USB Support: Universal Serial Bus which is suppose to be big breakthrough in the technology, is not supported by the iPad. Almost all of the peripheral these days are connected to devices through USB. So, no USB drive, USB headset and USB related stuff.

Other Drawbacks: Apart from these disadvantages iPad have many more drawbacks:

• iPad reads e-book but doesn’t have e-ink, the one which make the screen look like real page of a book.
• Supports only application from Apple App Stores.
• No external memory slot

Price tag is much high

With all these disadvantages, the thing that comes to my mind is: “iPad is marketing 2G”. iPad certainly  not a 3G device.

Pingo is probably the  coolest gadget ever for all the Facebook  addicts. Basically pingo is a robot which can be integrated with your Facebook account through a Facebook application which let you give name to this robot, set its mood, profile and manage its daily life. Pingo the robot is tiny and come with an internal speaker, microphone, proximity sensors, ground sensors, two small wheels for its motion and two little dazzling LED eyes.

Here is what the little pingo does:

• Access your Facebook account via Facebook application.
• Get your friend’s updates
• Can be played and loved by sending gifts with Facebook gift page
• Reads newspaper from any site or blog
• Get weather forecast
• Can sing you tune
• Receives alerts from email account

• Can be played by shaking, poking and scratching it

Pingo is cute, lovable, adorable, interactive Facebook friend.Call it a pet or a robot but this is surely a cool gadget a geek would like to have.

Here is a video demonstrating how it works.

Well, after a long month of busy schedule, we have resumed our work  to provide our visitors with the latest gadgets in the geek world. Since the gadget field is a vast area, we have now  decided to provide our visitors with only those gadgets that can be useful to our visitors or which create a buzz in the gadget world. Hope you like our work and continue to support us in the future.

- gadgetcastle.com Team

Google is now fast, simple and stylish. Google recently announced about 100 themes designed by artists for its browser, Google chrome. These themes is a merger of art and technology that may enrich your browsing experience ( you won’t be able to see much of art as you will be working on web pages).  If you are a Google Chrome user you can apply these themes here.

Here is a video which shows the preview of some of the themes.

Steven Alop of Microsoft at a recent Wharton Business School conference unveiled a video depicting the vision of 2019.  Its really an interesting video which show how touchscreen technology is going to conquer the world in the next years. It’s no hard to imagine all the things show in the video coming true  because earlier in 1990’s even simple touchscreen technology was seen as a future vision in those days, which is now used in almost every gadget.

It has not been long we have talked about  Apple’s Tablet and hold our breathe for official launch of it. But here is a contender for Apple’s Tablet: Microsoft’s Tablet Courier. Courier is still under developing stages and is currently with the outside agency for better testing.  The dual 7-inch multi-touch screens designed for writing, drawing, flicking and fingers make it fit to call a booklet more rather than tablet. The two dual screens are connected by a hinge, the battery life and wireless connectivity status are along the rim of one of the screens. This tablet supports wireless charging  that means it charge through inductive pad. And yes, On the back is a camera. In spite of the fact that Courier promises user friendly applications, a pen dominated interface with several multi-touch finger touch gesture and sophisticated themes makes it more complex than the details of Apple’s Tablet. Hold-on till we get further details about Courier.

Dell is still  found fighting hard its reputation as manufacturer of flavourless computer. Its worldwide share at the end of last year was seen 15% dropping 3 percent down from 2007. So Dell knew they have to make an attractive product to catch the eyes of the world. And the response from Dell was its soon to be released Latitude Z notebook. The notebook is has 16 inch screen, which is larget than the typical notebook. And yes, it also have Intel proccesor, hard disk, RAM and advanced wireless capabilities. According to Forbes the notebook will be charged wireless, which is sets it uniqueness. Although the details about the wireless charging is not yet revealed. Probably, this notebook will have a inductive charging pad which will charge without wire. This notebook will be priced little more higher than the typical $1100 notebook.

Connecting two computers at remote places has always been a hectic task. It usually requires two computers to have same software, passwords, waiting for connection. The connection between two remote computers is made easier by this gadget, iTwin, which aims to make the connection process entirely plug and play.

iTwin is a simple two-part USB drive. The first part is plugged to one system and the other part is connected to remote computer on which the sharing is done. This provide instant access to the remote computer. You might think that the two parts are connected by cable, but they aren’t. iTwin connects two computer without cables, just USB drive and internet. The two parts of this gadgets remind me of those friendship or love lockets, where you have the half and your friend or love the other half.

Using USB drive is simple. Sometimes you don’t have enough space to store other computer’s hard drive or find security problem( loosing USB drive,etc). iTwin is a solution to this problems.

According to the developers this gadget is set to launch in first half of 2010 and is expected to sell 200 millions of these drives next year. This gadget is expected to be priced at $99.

Here is a video which shows the demonstration of this gadget.

Hello, guests, our site readers.

Firstly, thanks to all our readers for making this site hit and hope you will keep reading our articles.

Due to this we have decided to host a contest. We are very happy and excited to launch our first contest in gadgetcastle.com

Okay, straight to the details…

Participating in the Castle Contest is so simple. This contest will run for 30 days, from Sept.11 to Oct11.

Winning in the contest depends purely on your luck factor.

The winners of this contest will be chosen by random pick algorithm in random.org ,

The First Prize for this contest: $20

The second Prize for this contest: $10.

The winners will be paid through PayPal.

How to enter into the contest:

It’s simple. All you need to do is gather 3 points.

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Good Luck!

mp3 Player and i-pod: Remember the day you  saw a college student without headphones. I bet the answer to this is No. Now-a-days its hard to imagine being in college without mp3 player or i-pod. Today’s mp3 player are not only play ones favourite  playlist but also have remainders and calenders to organize students life. Now with the mp3 players with 1GB storage costing at around $25 – $35 these have become the favourite gadgets for the students.

Digital Camera: Now are the days most of the college students freak with social networking sites like facebook, MySpace, Orkut, etc in their spare time. The best things students like about this sites is their feature to share photos with friends. Students enjoy sharing their photos with their friends and commenting on friend’s photos on social networking sites. For this all they need to get best pic is a digital cameras. With the down fall in the prices of digital cameras, these are seen with almost all the college students.

Cell Phone: This is a prime gadgets now-a-days. There might be hardly any students who does not possesses this gadget. Remember text messaging in boring lecture, exchanging files through bluetooth, multimedia messaging. Tell me now will you get into or survive in college without this gadget?

Water Bottle: Sometimes not everytime, you think of your health too. Though your college serves mineral water to its students many prefer getting their own Water Bottles. If you are more concerned about your health and water consumption per day, then the Hydracoach Intelligent Water Bottle is the thing you are looking for. This is not your regular water bottle, it reports how much percentage of water you have consumed and how much furthur you need to consume for better health.

Laptop: For Lecturer’s student or a funky students this gadgets satisfies both these kind of students need. With many college students prefer earning online to fill their pockets its hard to see a students without this gadget in your college canteen. Many use it for academic purpose, many for earning, some for time-pass, this gadget can be used for any purpose.

Portable Disk: When you are working on your assignment or project its a good practise to take back-up of your data in a portable disk. The ScanDisk Cruzer Titanium shown here is a good choice. It’s easy to use and is crush proof up-to 2000 pounds.

Japan is all set to build a solar power station in space, which will generate power in space and beam it to earth. This project is planned by Japan’s Electrical giant Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and IHI Corp. The project will cost around 2 trillion yen ($21 billion) and is expected to complete in next four years.
The one giga-watt solar station will have four square kilometers big solar panels, which would generate enough energy to light up 294,000 houses in Japan without using cables (through microwaves). It may sound like a science fiction movie but it will be good alternative energy source as the fossil fuels are soon gonna disappear. It is expected to generate power from sun in space regardless of weather unlike the earth based solar plants. Its obvious that the project will cost no less than $21 billion as the project will require transportation of solar panels 36,000 Kms above the earth surface. Launching a rocket into the space itself cost around $10 billion.

Its a pretty extraordinary project and let’s hope it doesn’t end up with side effects to people in Japan.

One of the source claimed that Apple is working on 10-inch tablets and also 13″ and 15″ model, all of them running on Mac OS X. The source claimed that this touchscreen prototype, which is built by Apple is made of aluminum and is in the the shape of i-phone. The source also claimed that Apple’s tablet is built in China and runs on Mac OS X 10.5. But the source is still unclear whether it is built for demonstration or as a production unit. Call it a rumor or a secret. It’s good to have a mobile gadget that fits in your pocket, so I think Apple will have to think twice before delivering the 13″ and 15″ models.

The world’s cheapest laptop was unveiled and demonstrated by one of the ministers in India. The laptop is unbelievably priced at Rs.500 ($ 10). The world’s cheapest laptop was produced by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Vellore Institute of Technology. The nano laptop is christened as “Sakshat” which mean “before your eyes”. This laptop is expected to bridge the gadget gap between rich and poor in the country. The laptop was specially designed for students living in rural India. It was built keeping in view the students, who wants to improve their computing skills, but cannot afford to buy normal laptop.

One of the senior official said that the laptop is smaller than the normal laptop and  requires some more tuning . It is expected to explode in the market within the next six months.  This small laptop has 2GB memory and wireless internet connectivity (wi-fi), though  its other features are not yet revealed. It is hard to imagine this laptop with Microsoft application.

The $10 laptop is seen as India’s response to XO and Intel’s Classmate, which are priced at $188 and $300 respectively. The world’s Cheapest laptop has already created a buzz in laptop industry across world.

The critics strongly opposes calling it a Laptop and rather refer it as a mere computing device. According to MeriNews report: ” It is a computing device which stores information which can be accessed by a normal laptop and has no screen, no keyboard, is 10 inches long and 5 inches wide”.

The world’s Cheapest Car” Nano”  by Tata from India and now the world’s Cheapest Laptop…. I wonder how Indian firms manage to cope up with the cheap price.

Its not a Rock. Seriously its not a Rock. Its a Rock Radio. Yes man! Its a Rock Radio. But, yes its made of cement.