If there’s any perfect gift idea out there, this is it. Perfect for your techie boyfriend or even for yourself. We here were so amazed with this products size, yet long list of features that we tagged it with ‘Tech Achievements.’

The credit card sized media player is just that. It’s a… media player… the size of a credit card! It comes pre-loaded with 2GB of storage with an expandable memory drive for MicroSD or TransFlash. (SDHC compatibility not specified). You can transfer the data and also charge the device’s 8 hour battery right over USB.

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Microsoft’s upcoming Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, according to benchmarks, is going to be more then twice as fast as Vista with it’s new service pack.

Devil Mountain Software of Florida used it’s own OfficeBench software which runs a series of resource demanding tasks in different Microsoft Office applications , on two machines. One was running Windows XP with Service Pack 3, and the other, Vista Service Pack 1 (both in beta). Guess what? XP more than doubled the performance of Vista according to the performance graph below.

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Mozilla reported that nearly 500,000 downloads of the FireFox 3 Beta 1 have commenced since it’s initial release earlier this month. (Fun Fact: That’s 3,179,500 MB Or nearly 3.17 TB of FireFox. Phwew, glad I’m not paying that hosting bill!) Mozilla Foundation said they only plan on two more beta releases before they release the FireFox 3 Final Release. One of which will be released by the end of 2007, and the last early in 2008.

The upcoming beta release will implement the upgraded user interface for Vista, Mac OS X, and of course Linux users which will provide a more adaptive look for it’s respective operating system environment.

An outraged reader from Consumerist reported to the gaming community the other day that his PS3, though was eligable for coverage, was denied by Sony for repairs. Why? Because is was simply “too dusty.”

As the story goes, the consumer called Sony and was told for hours, rep after rep, that because his product was a gift and didn’t have the receipt that he was not eligable for service. After many-a-reps later, one finally said that it was company policy to not require a receipt and that the serial number was all that he needed. He received a shipping box from Sony, and sent his beloved console in.

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You ever see people who recently purchased a new phone? Usually they will have their hands tied with both phones, rapidly typing to transfer over the contact lists, and depending on how much data in contacts, important dates, appointments or other important SIM stored info there is, you might not be seeing this person for quite some time.

Well now that’s a thing of the past! With this handy little gadget, you can easily and seamlessly copy over stored data from one SIM card to another! Or, if you commonly are a forgetful person and are in constant fear of losing your cell, the device has two data banks to backup up to two SIM cards. You can also use the device to browse the calendar as well as the contacts. The data in the internal memory is also password protected, so you can feel safe that no one will get a hold of your beloved backups.

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Post Office Showdown

View other XKCD Faves here.

Christmas is on the horizon, and as always cool, unique and sometimes weird products are popping up all over the place. Such as this colorful USB device that will be sure to draw attention to your cubicle. This little tree is packed with over 18,000 colorful fiber ends that flare through colors of red, blue, and green.

Feeling like you need to take Christmas with you to the break room? No problem, this little guy also runs off of 3 AAA batteries. The USB cable is about 5 feet long, and the tree itself measures 31cm tall, and is slightly wider than a standard computer mouse. Will also make a great cheap inter-office gift You can find it at ThinkGeek for under $15.

It’s about time Microsoft owns up to a few of their many faults. Microsoft plans on rleasing a set of 3 updates that they say will cure many of the complaints they’re receiving about Vista. MS claims it will address some of the core issues such as performance, reliability, and the overall stability of the year old operating system.

Patch one will supposedly improve battery life on mobile devices, up the stability of wireless connections, and decrease the operating system’s response time following a period of idle or non-use.

Part two of the trio only pertains only to Vista Ultimate and Home Premium, and adresses the way Media Center interacts with the XBox 360 as an extension on the software.

Finally, a third patch changes the way Windows interacts with USB devices, specifically on waking the computer which Microsoft says causes 2% of crashes in Vista.

However, don’t expect these updates too soon. They’re due to be released along side Vista SP1 in the beginning of next year. But will us Ultimate users ever see our Ultimate Extras we paid so much extra for? I’d say MS is holding out on us, hoping we’d forget eventually, but something tells me we never will.

It was only a mere ten-fifteen years ago when you could easily spend a good $400 on a 14″ CRT monitor. It would have cost you $1000 or more for a 17″ that had about as many colors as a small box of Crayons, not to mention it was as deep as it is wide and wasn’t any more flat than one of the moon’s craters. But now days as new innovations come about, and production costs are cut lower and lower, you can get a lot more bang for your buck. Such as a 24″ wide screen LCD computer monitor now below $300 USD with a little digging and searching. Such as the Soyo 24″ LCD, and that’s just it’s normal price, O***** *** is selling them on Black Friday for below $250! (Edited for legal purposes).

If you’re still running CRT, this would be a good time to upgrade. Not only are they better for your eyes, but they consume less power and last a lot longer, meaning much more bang out of that same buck! Not to mention, the holiday season generally brings about much better deals.

An estimated 90% of Mozilla FireFox users are infected with that pesky default search setting Search.Myway.com. Some people don’t even know it! However, if you’ve recently bought a Dell, chances are, you have it as well pre-installed.

Why is having this a bad thing? Well, normally firefox is designed to have you enter keywords, and then Google will handle this request and bring you directly to the website that best matches your keyword query. However, MyWay forces you to look at their search results which sometimes will include pesky ads and such. They ADD a middle man, slowing your productivity and wasting your time.

This is a little guide that will help you get rid of the keyword search page in a few simple steps. Not sure if you have it? Type a keyword in the URL bar, such as “Tech”. If you’re directed to search.myway.com, then you’re infected and should read on to the 4 steps that take less than a minute to complete!

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