Sun
1) UTStarcom Pantech PN-8200 smartphone, $100 with contract from Telus, $400 without contract.
Aimed at the business customer, the Pantech PN-8200 gives users access to their Microsoft Outlook contact list, calendar, e-mail and the Internet while at the same time being a compact device that sits neatly in their pocket. Of course no mobile phone would be complete these days without a camera and this one sports a 1.3 megapixel unit. As well, there’s an expandable memory card slot — miniSD up to four gigabytes — so you can store your music and videos and play them with Windows Media Player Mobile 10.
2) Nokia 5300 XpressMusic wireless phone, $80 with a Rogers Wireless contract.
If you like to combine phone and music functions into a single unit, then the Nokia 5300 could be the item you’ve been seeking. All you have to do is press the slider up to extend the phone to reveal the keypad and gain access to as many as 500 tracks worth of music stored on a one gigabyte microSD card. Dedicated volume controls allow users to listen to their song collections while texting, browsing or taking pictures with the phone’s 1.3 megapixel camera. Nokia has also launched a series of accessories — including mini-speakers, and various types of headphones — to go with the 5300.
3) HP Officejet Pro L7000 all-in-one colour printer series, starting at $400, available March 2007.
Targeted at the small business, the new HP Officejet Pro L7000 series comprises three inkjet printers that HP claims offer speeds comparable to colour laser printers — as fast as 12 pages per minute black and 10 ppm for colour, but at costs as low as six cents per page. Like most multifunction machines these units allow for printing, copying, scanning and faxing.
4) Genius G-Note 7100 digital tablet, $160 US.
An alternative to shelling out for an entire tablet PC, these devices allow the user to take notes during meetings or in the classroom and then transfer them to their PC using built-in handwriting recognition. The unit comes with two pens and is compatible with the new Windows Vista operating system.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007