A light smart phone

GIZMO GALLERY

The Anextek SP230 smart phone lacks a few of the features of the Sony-Ericsson P900 and Nokia's smart phones, but it's cheaper at Rs 26,500.

The SP230 is smaller and lighter than most smart phones at 109x68.5x21.5 mm and 150 gm. It works off a Windows Mobile 2003 platform preloaded with MS Office and Media Player and handwriting recognition.

The "engine" is a 400 MHz Intel PXA255 processor with 64 MB RAM and 64 MB ROM. The 25 mm antenna doubles as stylus-holder. The numeric keypad is detachable; you can use it as a touchscreen PDA or attach the flip keypad in phone mode.

For SMS, one can use touch-screen or keypad. The TFT screen is 3.5 inches and offers 240 x 320 pixels with 65,000 colors.

The cradle includes USB connectivity and a slot for an extra battery. The SP230 comes with stereo headphones for hands-free and MP3 play. The SP230 supports infrared, GPRS, bluetooth and WiFi but you need additional hardware to run the last two. There is no camera or MMS support.

A portable piano

This is the ultimate in portable electric pianos. The Yamano 61 Hand Roll Piano has a standard 61 key set and features such as 20 built-in tunes and 128 pre-set timbres. It can be rolled up and packed away when travelling.

It features a treble quality built-in speaker with output terminals for speakers or headphones. It also directly connects to the computer, converting from MIDI to any other digital audio format. It comes with a pouch and weighs just one kilo.

This $280 gadget is not only for alpha-geeks with a taste in music; it's actually a working tool for public performances and bands out on gigs. Yamano and its sales agent audiocubes (www.audicubes.com) promise to bundle appropriate transformers for every region.  IBM's Soho notebook  

IBM India has joined the price war with the IBM ThinkPad R50e, a fully-loaded entry level notebook at Rs. 44,000. The IBM ThinkPad R50e is a fully configured notebook with a 15-inch screen, Intel Celeron-M 1.3GHz processor, 256 Mb Ram and a 30Gb harddisk.

It comes pre-loaded with Windows XP and a CDR/W/DVD optical drive. It has an integrated 56K modem and sound card as part of the base configuration. Obviously this price point is targetted at small and medium businesses (SMB) and the small-office-home-office (SOHO) segments.

The ThinkPad R50e is also equipped with the latest ThinkVantage technology, "� a set of software and hardware tools specific to IBM ThinkPads only.  It is possible to have it pre-set with multiple operating systems including various flavours of Linux. The only notable thing is the absence of WiFi support.