Digital maestro works musical magic sans wires
The symphony is always in season with the Olive Symphony, a wireless digital music center from
Olive Media Products. Designed to play classical music, the hi-fi component has a noiseless 2.5-inch, 80-gigabyte hard drive that can hold 20,000 compositions, a CD-Rewritable drive for recording music onto discs and a broadband network connection that can stream music to five rooms at the same time. A USB port can be used to add music to an iPod. The system costs $900.
www.olive.us
Camera able to take it all in
Vacationers, take note: The 24mm wide-angle lens setting on Kodak’s EasyShare P880 digital camera is powerful enough to capture memorable photos of your family against a breathtaking backdrop. The 8-megapixel camera’s integrated lens can also optically zoom in up to 140mm (5.8x). Measuring 4.6 inches by 3.8 inches by 3.6 inches, the camera offers manual, preset-scene and auto-focusing options, and its 25-point focusing system can capture pictures of dimly lit scenes. Other features include a 2.5-inch color screen, an electronic viewfinder, a slot for a Secure Digital memory card, and a 30 frames-per-second video mode. It will go on sale in September for $600. www.kodak.com
LCDs without lots of dollars
If you long for a sleek liquid-crystal display monitor but don’t want to spend big bucks, take a look at ViewSonic’s latest LCD offerings. Priced at about $240, its 17-inch VA702b model provides a resolution of 1,280-by-1,024 pixels, a contrast ratio of 500:1 and a video response time of 12 milliseconds. Another 17-inch model, the VA712b, offers a contrast ratio of 350:1 and a faster response time of 8ms during video playback. It costs $250. Two 19-inch models also are available. The VA902b costs $320 and provides a contrast ratio of 550:1 and a response time of 8ms while the VA912b costs $340 and delivers a higher contrast ratio of 800:1, albeit a slower response time of 20ms.
www.viewsonic.com
Quicken opens eyes to where the money goes
If you’re wondering where all your money goes, you can find answers through Intuit’s newest line of Quicken titles. New pop-up reports provide insights into your spending habits, so you can ponder how much you spent dining out last month or gasp at your escalating commuting costs. Other new features allow you to save reports and invoices in a PDF format and to edit data within reports. Quicken 2006 Basic costs $30. Quicken 2006 Deluxe, which provides more detailed tracking features and basic investment tools, is $50. Quicken 2006 Premier, which offers more robust tracking tools, is $70, while Quicken Premier Home & Business, which includes tools for home-based businesses, is $80. A $20 mail-in rebate is available for the last three titles.
www.intuit.com
