electronics and gadgets

Power-Saving DVD Playback

With Windows 7, your PC will use less power when playing a DVD. Windows 7 requires less processing power than previous versions of Windows and is more effi cient when it spins discs.

Wake on Wireless LAN

Having your PC go into Sleep state when idle is a good way to conserve power. But what if you need to access your PC remotely? In Windows Vista, you can wake another PC in Sleep state only if it has a wired network connection. In Windows 7, you can use the Wake on Wireless LAN feature to wake the PC over a wireless network connection. Let’s say you’re using your laptop in the bedroom and want to see a photo on the PC in the kitchen. Because both are connected to your home network, it doesn’t matter if the
kitchen PC is in Sleep state, because you can use Wake on Wireless LAN and view the photo. Similarly, the IT administrator in your company can wake up wirelessly connected PCs to apply software updates or perform other maintenance—and save on power costs too.

Smart Network Power

Your mobile PC may send energy to parts of your computer even when they’re not being used—such as sending power to the network adapter when you don’t have an Ethernet cable plugged in. Windows 7 automatically turns off power to the network adapter when the cable is disconnected and restores power when the cable is connected. IT professionals can take advantage of this feature to reduce power costs.

Power Efficiency Diagnostics

In Windows 7, we’ve updated the power configuration utility to detect problems with devices, policies, firmware, system settings, programs, and other common items where settings can reduce power efficiency. The information is presented in an easy-to-understand report. Although we designed this feature primarily for developers and system integrators, it may also be useful to the tech-savvy.

Due to arrive in the New Year here in the UK via Vodafone, Nokia’s relatively new N900 Maemo mobile phone tablet gets turned into a controller for the PlayStation 3 game console. The hack in question is in fact a new application currently still being improved and is in its early stages. Its known as BlueMaemo Bluetooth emulator and allows the N900 to mimic bluetooth devices.

If you’re a Nokia fan and happen to have the PS3, this doesn’t look too complicated to setup which means this application could make your gaming experience even cooler.

Its developer Valério Domingos humbly points out that the purpose of connecting up to a PS3 is purely for menu navigation and easier text input, though we’ve no doubt a few hardcore Nokia loyalists will try using this in an action game to prove the N900’s superiority.

Unfortunately, the video is in Italian but you should still be able to make out most of what is happening during the entire process. Please note that BlueMaemo is still in the extras-devel repository, this means that theapplication is still in alpha and unstable and may hang/crash your device.

What was first unveiled exclusively on the Motorola Droid is now available to the rest of the Android gang. If you’ve got an Android phone running version 1.6, you’ll be able to download the new Google Maps Navigation application for free off the Android Market from today.

Android 1.6 phones in the US currently include the currently available T-Mobile my touch 3G, the G1 and the HTC Tattoo, as well as the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. However handsets like the HTC Hero, Droid Eris, Samsung Moment and the Samsung Behold II all run Android 1.5 so won’t be getting the new feature.

While you will get features like turn by turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting, some features of Android 2.0 are not available on Android 1.6, for example, the ability to use the “navigate to” voice command. Nevertheless, if you’re an Android user with the eligible phones mentioned above in the US, you’re definitely in luck and the likes of TomTom, Garmin will no doubt be banging their heads against the wall with this news. If you’re in the UK / non-US, it looks like there could be an unofficial way to get this working on your Android phone, this will mean abit of tweaking around but watch this space.

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