Not a Mickey Mouse computer mouse
Waiting for important e-mail? A quick glance at the Logitech MX610 Laser Cordless Mouse will let you know if it’s arrived. Color-coded lights signal the arrival of new e-mail and instant messages. The mouse can even be configured to alert you only to specific senders’ messages. To conserve its battery power, it automatically turns itself off when the PC is dormant. Available in October, the mouse will cost $60. It ships with a 2.4-gigahertz Universal Serial Bus (USB) microreceiver with a range of about 30 feet.
www.logitech.com
Notebook boasts 6 hours-plus of power
Go ahead and unplug Sharp’s M4000 WideNote notebook. Sharp says its ultraportable notebook’s battery, coupled with its easy-to- control sophisticated power management system, can deliver more than six hours of computing power. Weighing about 3.8 pounds, the laptop has a 1.73-gigahertz Intel Pentium M processor, an 80-gigabyte hard drive, a 13.3-inch super-bright widescreen display and a combination CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive. It also includes a Secure Digital (SD) card slot, two USB 2.0 connections and an Ethernet jack. It costs about $1,800.
www.sharpsystems.com
Digital cameras ready for wireless networking
Thanks to built-in wireless networking capabilities, you can snap photos with Nikon’s new COOLPIX cameras and then wirelessly transfer the images to a computer on a shared network up to 100 feet away. When used with a $50 Wireless Printer Adapter (PD-10), the images also can be sent to a printer. The 8-megapixel COOLPIX P1 costs $550, while the 5-megapixel P2 model is $400. Both models have a 2.5-inch color display, a movie mode that can capture video at 30 frames per second and a tool that automatically detects and fixes photos with red-eyes.
www.nikondigital.com
Camcorder helps cuts through the (video) tape
Instead of recording camcorder footage on tape, Panasonic’s SDR-S100 camcorder saves your memories on a Secure Digital (SD) card. The compact camcorder sports a Leica Dicomar lens, a 10x optical zoom and a 2.8-inch LCD screen. Video can be recorded for viewing in a wide-screen format or in a conventional TV format. The camcorder also can snap still pictures with a resolution of 2,048 by 1,512 pixels. It ships with a rechargeable battery pack and a 2-gigabyte SD memory card, which can hold about 100 minutes of MPEG2 video recorded in the long-play mode. The camcorder costs about $1,200.
www.panasonic.com
