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In the world of gadgets, thin is definitely in. Apple and HP are both aware of this, and the companies currently ship the two thinnest notebooks available in the world. We re talking about the MacBook Air and the Voodoo Envy 133. We were able to get our hands on both notebooks, and figured we d put them side-by-side, just so that we could give you a look at the two thinnest portable computers in the world, and allow you to judge for yourself. What do we mean? Well, we think this one is a toss up, due to the shapes of both notebooks. Hit the video, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

HP just unleashed a couple of new notebooks earlier today, including their new 16- and 18-inch HDX units, just in time for the holiday season. We were able to spend some time with HP s Kevin Wentzel to get a look at the entire consumer notebook lineup for this holiday season. It features the aforementioned HDX, a new HP Imprint finish for the dv5 and dv7 Pavilions, and their tablet as well. These things are affordable, and some are even powerful enough to replace your desktop at this point. In fact, we also have a look at HP s notebook docking station as well, which fits right in with that line of thinking. Hit the video for the full scoop on everything, and try not to droll over those hot-looking HDXs, mkay?

At the Connecting Your World event in Berlin, Germany, HP announced its hardiest line of laptops yet. The HP Elite notebook PCs have been engineered to resist drops, scratches, spills, anything that comes its way. It also features a handy business card reader, and the HP Quicklook no-boot-required information display (not to be confused with Mac OSX s Quick Look) puts information right at your fingertips.

At Computex 2008 in Taipei, Taiwan, AverMedia shows off their new digital TV Tuner solution for the Mac. It looks like a competent solution, and it s great to see more TV tuner hardware that s OSX compatible. Look for it by the end of 2008. Pricing is likely to be on par with the other Volar series, which is around $100.

At HP s Connecting Your World 2008 conference in Berlin, Germany, Rahul Sood of Voodoo PC announced the Voodoo Omen, a new top-of-the-line water-cooled PC using an as-yet-unannounced new set of nVidia SLI GPU s and a new Intel CPU as well. It also features a fully functional LCD monitor on the front of the case. The construction on this PC is amazing, but with its $7000 price tag we re not sure we re ready to upgrade just yet. The Omen is currently only available to former Voodoo customers on an invite-only basis, so if you are looking to get your hands on one, you might just be out of luck.

At the Asus booth during Computex 2008, we had the pleasure of looking at their new EeeStick video gaming controllers. Similar to the Nintendo Wii s Wii Remote and Nunchuk, aiming and player movement is controlled by swinging the right controller around and moving the left thumbstick. Sunrise Kuo of Asus showed us a demo of the controllers in action. When they re ready in July or August, they will be packaged with the Asus EeePC 901 or EeePC 1000 models.

We were pleasantly surprised at this Computex 2008 when we saw Gigabyte s new convertible tablet, the M912. At $650, with an 8.9-inch screen and 160gb HDD, it promises to be an excellent competitor to the HP Mini-Note, which we reviewed recently. Gigabyte s Brendon Lo says that the M912 should be out somewhere around July 2008. We re looking forward to getting our hands on one.

AMD shows us how the home theatre PC arena is getting exciting again. Thanks to AMD Live!, manufacturers are finally creating affordable high-quality and high-performance components for the home theatre PC. Inexpensive platforms supporting full-resolution 1080p HD and 7.1 channel surround sound are being manufactured and will be out for sale real soon. We love the intiative AMD has taken on this one! We talk with Jay Taylor of AMD Live! and have a look at the new components.

At HP s Connecting Your World event in Berlin, Germany, we talked with John Cook, VP of marketing for HP s Consumer PC group. He gave us a hands-on first look at the beautiful new HP TouchSmart PC. One thing we really liked about the new TouchSmart is its completely redone interface. The software looks clean, polished, useful, and eminently easy to use. It would be great, however, if the TouchSmart made more use of multi-touch. Cook demonstrates a pinch gesture in the software but that s pretty much it. We re keeping our eyes peeled for more multi-touch functionality in upcoming software updates and releases.

Drobo is meeting some fierce competition from Promise this year. The SmartStor is an all-in-one RAID5 controller with hot-swappable drives just like the Drobo, but it also includes a built-in NAS to share files over the network, and a BitTorrent client to boot. It s compatible with dlna, UPnP, and AMD Live! systems so sharing media is a breeze as well. We talk with Alex Ling from Promise at Computex 2008 and he walks us through the SmartStor s many features.

We caught up with Pat Moorhead of AMD and had a chat with him about the new Turion X2 chipsets and the new Hybrid Graphics technology, which allows dynamic switching between integrated and discrete graphics cards, with no restart required. The technology promises better battery life and enhanced rendering performance (although, unfortunately, not necessarily at the same time). Stay tuned for more news from Computex 2008.

While the Macbook Air has long reigned as the king of sleek and sexy laptops the newly announced Voodoo Envy manages to beat it in terms of both computing power, and clean sexy design. The Envy features a carbon fiber case (with an option for the automotive finish of your choice), and a revolutionary new AC adapter with an Ethernet port and a dedicated 802.11n router to allow wired connections without wires. The Envy clocks in at 0.7” thick which dethrones the Macbook Air as the thinnest laptop on the market, while still managing to pack 2 USB ports (one of which is eSATA compatible), HDMI, and an ExpressCard slot. Check out the video for a first look at this slim and lustworthy computing masterpiece in an interview with Rahul Sood, founder of Voodoo and CTO of HP Global Gaming.

HP hosted the Connecting Your World event in Berlin Germany to launch a bevy of new products including 17 new laptops, new monitors, and cell phones. Check out our interview with HP’s Elizabeth Gillian to get a quick overview of some of their featured products including the HP Elite, the Voodoo Envy 133, and the DreamColor monitor. Stay tuned for more coverage of the HP Connecting Your World 2008 event.

You should all know by now that we are going to be giving away a sleek, slick, awesome HP HDX Dragon computer prize package as part of the 31 Days of the Dragon contest. It amounts to just about $5,200 worth of prizes if you were to go out and buy everything on your own. Pretty sick, right? Well, we wanted to give you a look at exactly what you would be walking away with if you won. In this episode, we show off everything. The HDX Dragon computer, all the software, all the games, and all the Blu-ray movies. We run down the computer specs as well, and we clue you in on what we will be doing to pick a winner. We will be posting more about the contest and our method for choosing a winner in a bit more detail tomorrow. It s late, and I ve been moving all day...but at the very least, we had to get this video up for you guys at midnight, because we know that some of you are hardcores. We couldn t leave you hanging. A big thank you goes out to HP for sponsoring this contest, and this episode.

A quick and simple way to set up fast Time Machine backups on your Mac Pro, or more storage for all those Bleeding Edge episodes you ve been downloading, is to add in more hard drives. Thankfully, Apple has made the upgrade path to accomplishing this super simple. In this episode, we show you the step-by-step process that is takes to install a new hard drive in your Mac Pro in under 5 minutes. All you need is a Mac Pro, a Philips screwdriver, and a SATA hard drive. Oh, and of course a few minutes of spare time. It really is that easy. Hit up the video for the proof, and let us know what you think. A big thank you goes out to HP for sponsoring this episode.

In this episode, we show you how to install and upgrade the RAM in your Apple MacBook Pro, in less than five minutes. In case you weren t aware, the last couple generations of the notebook actually support up to 4GB of RAM. We are still trying to wrap our head around that number, because for a portable, that is insane. Even better, though, is the fact that this is such a cheap upgrade when you look at the very nice boost in performance it ll net you in return. You can buy 2 2GB RAM chips for your MacBook Pro for just over $100 USD. Again, an easy way to get more performance out of your notebook at an inexpensive price. Check out the video for the full tutorial. If you need to buy RAM for your MacBook Pro, hit up Crucial for a great deal. A big thank you goes out to HP for sponsoring this episode.

The HP Garage is recognized as the birthplace of Silicon Valley. We got the rare opportunity to get inside of the Garage (thanks to our sponsor HP) to bring you a look at an important piece of tech history. Be sure to also check out our HP Garage photo tour. We also have a bunch of images in our HP Garage photo gallery. We give you a peek at the rich history behind HP - if you are into tech, this is definitely one to watch. We get the story of how two men took HP from your average startup, to what we see today. A big thank you goes out to HP and Verizon FiOS for sponsoring this episode.

Add To Your Site: At Gear Live, we use ExpressionEngine to manage our vast array of sites, authors, and blog posts. Things like MovableType, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal just don t cut it for us. During SXSW, we got the opportunity to get an early looks at ExpressionEngine 2.0. If you have a blog, or want to blog in the future, you need to watch this video to see what is coming soon from the crew over at EllisLab. Seriously, we can t praise these guys enough for what they do. If you ve never heard of the product and want to give it a shot, you can download the free Core version over at the ExpressionEngine website. If you go for the full version, you have access to all sorts of upgrades. Of course, ExpressionEngine 2.0 isn t available just yet, but something tells us we will be seeing it sooner rather than later. A big thank you goes out to HP and Verizon FiOS for sponsoring this episode. Here's how to get the show: Subscribe: iTunes iPod / H.264 | iTunes MPEG-4 | RSS H.264 Feed | RSS MPEG-4 Feed |Download| - iPod-formatted H.264 |Download| - Apple TV High Resolution |Download| - MPEG-4 Tags: Read More | ExpressionEngine product page

At Gear Live, we use ExpressionEngine to manage our vast array of sites, authors, and blog posts. Things like MovableType, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal just don t cut it for us. During SXSW, we got the opportunity to get an early looks at ExpressionEngine 2.0. If you have a blog, or want to blog in the future, you need to watch this video to see what is coming soon from the crew over at EllisLab. Seriously, we can t praise these guys enough for what they do. If you ve never heard of the product and want to give it a shot, you can download the free Core version over at the ExpressionEngine website. If you go for the full version, you have access to all sorts of upgrades. Of course, ExpressionEngine 2.0 isn t available just yet, but something tells us we will be seeing it sooner rather than later. A big thank you goes out to HP and Verizon FiOS for sponsoring this episode.

We hope you ve all enjoyed our CES 2008 video coverage. We ve gone through our hours of footage, and picked out some of the best bloopers that our staff experienced. We know how disappointed you all probably are to realize that we aren t perfect, but we think you should have gathered that from the Gear Live documentary. Anyhow, have at it. We look forward to making fools out of ourselves again come CES 2009. Oh, and next year we will have to try and beat hot dog guy in the category of overall buffoonery. You ll have to watch the video to see what we mean.

Have you ever wanted to play your Wii without having to have that pesky Wiimote in your hand? Reactrix hopes that their WAVEscape product might come close to providing that experience. We got a look at it during CES. The WAVEscape contains a camera that can track the motion of multiple people, distinguishing each person individually. Everyone can use natural motion to interact with different things on the screen, including games. Now, we aren t sure when, if ever, the WAVEscape technology will be available in the home. It is more designed as a cool diversion that can be used commercially. It s all about the engaging advertising experience - you know, punch the panda and maybe get a coupon? WAVEscape is the brainchild of Reactriz and TYZX. They plan on having over 100 of these out and about by the end of the year.

If you’re into High Definition technology, check out the DV520HD from Mustek. It records videos and photos in 1080i high def. This makes it easy to point-and-shoot, hook up to your entertainment system, and easily enjoy. You can now re-live those lovely vacation sunsets on your HDTV. Available this month for $199 USD, which isn t bad for an ultra-portable high definition camera at the consumer level. As for the rest of the stats, the device also has a 5.0MP CMOS, 2.5 Swivel LTPS LCD, 2X Digital Zoom, USB 2.0, and 46MB Internal Memory. Yeah, for HD recording, we are thinking you might want to pick up an extra SD card or two.

In this video, we bring you a whirlwind tour of the Monster Cable booth at the 2008 CES event. We are accompanied by Seth Combs and DJ Irie. Monster Cable CEO Noel Lee made a slew of announcements at his 2008 CES press conference. Some of the new products on the way include five different speed-rated HDMI cables, also Outlets to Go 3, a power strip that includes a USB port for recharging electronics. iSoniTalk is an adapter for the iPhone that allows any headphone to be used with the ever-popular iPhone, while the iCarPlay Wireless 250 is billed as the “World’s Most Advanced iPod FM Transmitter”. The big announcement was made in person by renowned rap and music producer Dr. Dre and music impresario Jimmy Iovine, CEO of Interscope Records. Together they introduced “Beats by Dr. Dre”, headphones designed for the iPod generation and to specifically replace the earbuds that come with the iPod. Dre said he has been asked to put his name on many headphones in the past. But he endorses Beats because they have the newest technology, for a listening experience this is low-bass friendly with high-quality clarity. Because as Dre put it, “...music should be heard the way it s intended”. When asked what he liked most about the headphones, Dre simply replied, “the sound.” ‘Nuff said! Look for the state-of-the-art headphones in June, for $400 USD.

Retrevo.com presents a unique take on gadget comparison shopping. By spidering a veritable avalanche of shopping comparison sites, they compile a near-comprehensive snapshot of just about every gadget they can, including feature sets, average reviews and price points. They plot these into neat regression charts that outline a given gadgets value as determined by its number of features plotted against its price. They re also able to sort things into cost points like high end , mid range and budget and make comparisons based on these facts. Since their spider is constantly compiling and recompiling new data points, they re able to recategorize a given gadget as its prices change and as more reviews become available. The site is engineering to be a definitive way to get a good look at a given gadget s feature sets and your value for your dollar. Since they bring in quick access to reviews from all over the net and include product manual searching and archiving, this becomes a pretty useful tool for techphiles. Take a look at our video to learn a bit more about the service and how it works.

So you already have a phone, but you d still like a gadget to surf the Internet, view photos, listen to your MP3s and watch your videos. While not an iPhone, Mustek’s MMP 240 (and MMP 250) will do the job. With a 2.4” and 2.5” screen respectively, you can enjoy (and showoff) your multimedia goodness from only $99 to $199 USD. Oh, and even if the product doesn t look interesting - you have to take a listen to the PR person showing off the product. He may have been drunk. Or he may have simply been hoping to find a way to spice up what otherwise was simply him showing off an iPod touch knockoff. You be the judge. Hit us in the comments with your thoughts.

While not the fuel cell battery replacement for gadgets we keep hearing about Horizon is promising some very cool technology nonetheless: portable, enviromentally friendly power on demand - just add water! Their portable generator technology is aimed at disaster relief, outdoor, and developing countries. The totally recyclable cartridges have an infinate shelf life until activated, and can be activated by adding plain old water - no filtration neccesary. Check out the video for more details on this cool new tech.

Everyone loves iPod speakers. At least that’s what I’m thinking, after taking a look at the market. Jensen’s newest offerings, the JiSS 550 and JiSS 330, retailing for $129 and $99 respectively. Both docks include side flow bass ports for crisper sound and remote controls, and both are available now. Another, newer offering from Jensen is an HD radio enabled iPod speaker. Along with all of the rest of the cool tricks that HD radio receivers have (FM multicasting, digital sound and station information services, among others), Jensen’s newest HD offering features an iTunes tagging function - when you hear a song on the radio that you know you’re going to want to hear again, repeatedly and whenever you want, with the touch of a button you can send the song information to your iPod. On your next sync, you’ll get a prompt from iTunes reminding you that you wanted to buy the song. Available in April, MSRP on the HD radio iPod speaker will be coming in at an estimated $179, but rumor has it that if you head over to Target when the speaker is released, you could save yourself enough to buy a couple of albums worth of songs you tagged on the unit.

Etymotic is out with some new earphones this time around at CES. Developed specifically for gamers, the EDGE (an acronym for Enhanced Definition Gaming Earphones) Acoustics line of earphones has been created to give gamers an edge (har har) by using spatial cues to make them more aware of what’s going on around them within a game. The earphones have a microphone and send switch, so they eliminate the need for separate microphones on the desk and are also compatible with most standard VOIP hardware. Etymotic’s HF2 earphones are based on their ER4 model, but feature a microphone with a mic and a send switch plus a 4 barrel plug making it fully compatible with the iPhone. Retailing at $179, these earphones look to be a great value and will be available soon. Last on the list from Etymotic is a Bluetooth headset with a detachable boom. Because the boom extends almost all the way to the wearer’s mouth, it broadcasts 28 to 30 decibels - still within the safe range of volume but a lot easier to hear for the person on the other end of the line. The headset will be available soon for an MSRP of $129.

We couldn t quite get our hands on the LG Watch Phone concept (and they were stopping all non-press individuals from even taking photos, which always seems strange to us) but we did get to talk to an LG rep about what the concept may evolve into and what features are working already. The screen is gorgeous and they ve built the system to work with just three buttons, including a jog button of sorts, which lets you scroll easily. The concept sends and receives texts and is currently built to work on GSM but they said they haven t finalized providers or networks yet, and could easily be made to work on CDMA. No word yet on battery life, but the watch *will* apparently include a built in mic and speaker (for Dick Tracy"-style communication, ostesibly) but will be primarily for use with Bluetooth. Since this is just a concept, they were also mum on any sort of release date, but LG sounded like sometime this year or early next year would be reasonable. What s your opinion on the utility of a watch phone? Would you want something with stripped down functionality like that? (Text messaging would be a nightmare I think, but you could store templates and recall them I suppose.) As a user of the Fossil FX-6001, I absolutely love having my watch integrate with my phone, but it only tells me when I receive a call or text, and who s calling. And that s enough for me. I much prefer the phone as a separate device, I think. Check the video for some close-up shots of the clock on the watch in operation and the nice screen and sleek design.