A lot of portable PC power cells last for only four or five hours, after which you’ll find yourself chained to a wall socket. Good thing there are external batteries to keep us in current when a plug’s nowhere to be found, and Tom’s Hardware has done some benchmarking on a slew of such devices so you’ll know which one’s suited for you. A Dell Vostro 3300 and an Inspiron Mini 10 running Windows 7 were used to put packs from Amstron, Brunton, Digipower, Electrovaya, Energizer, Lenmar, PowerTraveller and Tekkeon through some real-world paces — we’re talking word processing and web surfing, not fragging and film editing. So if you’re in the market for a mobile power unit, hit the source link and get the down and dirty on which external battery’s best.

External batteries benchmarked, the portable juice is loose originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve said it before a few times: failure is inevitable and also the highway to success. Marketing expert/entrepreneur Seth Godin offers tips to help you “fail better” so you end up profiting — or at least learning — from your failures. More

The US military seems to adore the idea of wearable displays, hence its continued efforts to make them a reality. We know it seems like just yesterday that DARPA tapped Lockheed Martin to build low-power, lightweight augmented-reality eyewear, and it was actually four full years ago when the wild and wonderous dream was to craft HMDs as small and light as “high-fashion sunglasses.” Well, that dream lives on, this time with holograms: the lenscrafters at Vuzix just received a cool million to develop goggles that holographically overlay battlefield data on the wearer’s vision. It all sounds very Dead Space (or, you know, like a Top Secret version of Recon-Zeal’s Transcend goggles), promising realtime analysis of anything within sight. The company believes the finished product will be no more than 3mm thick and completely transparent when turned off. If all goes well, expect this to trickle down to consumers in short order; soon you’ll have full “situational awareness” — including relationship status — of that mysterious stranger you’ve been eyeballing from across the room.

DARPA’s next-gen wearable display: augmented-reality, holographic sunglasses originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s a step in the right direction, sure, but if you were hoping for a genuinely unlimited data plan, think again. T-Mobile’s new plans, Even More and Even More Plus may offer unlimited phonecalls and messaging, but data is capped at 2GB a month and throttled afterwards. More

It's one of the small features in word-publishing software that we take for granted—pagination. But it's taken Google up until now to add page breaks to its Docs offering. The new update also adds native printing; the ability to print right from the browser in a WYSIWYG-stylee. [Google Docs Blog] More

Solaleya’s Pearl house takes on the counter-intuitive task of maximizing its energy efficiency by limiting the amount of solar energy it absorbs throughout the year. This tactic allows the structure to delegate energy-intensive tasks to the elements. More

An early build of Windows 8 (milestone 1, of 3) is passing, as I write this, through the tubes of the internets. There are leaked screenshots showing off some, but not all (this milestone isn’t nearly feature-complete) of the new features coming in this version. Are you the curious type, who ran custom builds of Longhorn for a couple years back in the day? You probably are reading this on Windows 8.

Of course, we don’t condone piracy or the spreading of this information. But we’d be remiss in our duties if we didn’t at least mention that it’s out there.

[via Reddit]

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Windows 8 Milestone 1 Build Leaks

Can’t stop banging out Rebecca Black’s oh-so-infectious jams on your knickerbockers? Korg’s Wavedrum Mini won’t make Friday any less awful, but it could make your inexcusable actions a wee bit less annoying. The Q3-bound Mini crams the company’s digital drum pad tech into a portable package with a built in speaker, and its myriad buttons let you choose from 100 different sounds including strings, synth tones, and a gaggle of percussion instruments. You’ll also get 100 preset rhythms for those who prefer their instruments play themselves, but surely that’s not you… right? Heck, there’s even a loop function so you can build layer upon layer (upon layer!) of cacophonous noise. The best part, however, is the included sensor, which can be clipped to almost anything, turning your ceaseless toe tapping into bass hits. If you can’t wait to see it in action, take a gander at the exceedingly long demo video after the break.

Continue reading Korg Wavedrum Mini makes music from your nervous tics (video)

Korg Wavedrum Mini makes music from your nervous tics (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Toshiba announced [PDF] it has developed a series of self-decrypting hard drives that automatically destroy their content when connected to an unknown piece of hardware. The company says it’s the first to make it possible to configure such devices, for example to invalidate protected data by command or on power cycle.

Not too surprisingly, the main target group are financial, governmental and medical institutions with a need to protect data stored in hard drives in PCs, copy machines, printers and other hardware.

Toshiba will offer the 2.5-inch/7,200rpm “Wipe Technology HDD” with 160/250/320/500 and 640GB (pictured) on board in June this year (the first samples will be shipped later this month).

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Toshiba HDD Destroys Content Automatically When Connected To Unknown PC