Luxury from LaCie USB with Galet USB thumb drive

if you people who tend to either put your USB?

LaCie introduced today a new USB thumbdrive that in no way resembles the look of a thumb; instead, the Galet USB drive looks like a pebble. "Galet," by the way, is the French way to say "pebble." But that's not the coolest thing about the drive.

According to LaCie, the Galet is hand-crafted in France. Each unit is individually plated with silver through Christofle's 150-year-old silvering process. After that, the company claims, the device is carefully inspected for a smooth finish and radiant polish. Basically, it looks really cool and will make a great gift for Valentine's Day.

As a storage device, however, the Galet isn't equally impressive. It offers just 4GB of storage space and supports USB 2.0. The drive does come with LaCie's Private-Public software with password protection, which is similar to that of the LaCie FastKey.

However, the real reason why you would pay more attention and not lose it is its price. The drive costs a whopping $130, most of which, presumably, is the emotional value. To help you keep this type of investment secure, the Galet comes with a string for you to hook it to anything, such as a set of keys.

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Play Now Back to the Future '4 'on Your Computer

Hey, this is how it happened! Or is it?

(Credit: Telltale)

Editor's note: Yes, Episode One of Back to the Future: The Game was released more than two weeks ago and, yes, this is our first attempt at coverage. Send your complaints to the holiday break and CES. We'll make sure coverage (if any) of the subsequent episodes is more timely.

Collectively, I've probably seen the "Back to the Future" movies more than 100 times. The first movie especially, was a seminal film for me and captured my imagination like no other before it. Thanks to HBO, which showed it literally twice daily during the summer of 1986, I developed what can only be described as an addiction to it.

While parts 2 and 3 didn't have quite the same effect on me, I love them both still, warts and all. Since the release of Part 3, there have been a few attempts at expanding the Back to the Future universe--I'm still trying to forget the Saturday morning cartoon--but all have failed to capture the magic of the movies.

Back to the Future: The Game (BTTF) feels like it belongs in this universe. Feeling like a continuation of the storyline that ended after Doc Brown took off in his flying hell train of death. This is probably the closest we'll ever come to a Back to the Future 4 and I'm completely fine with that.

Within seconds upon my first launch of the game, it was already playing my nostalgic heartstrings masterfully, using the iconic piano chime that starts both part 2 and 3.

From a gameplay perspective, BTTF is an adventure game in the vein of classic Lucasarts adventures like the Monkey Island series. The game begins with a scene that fans of the movies will immediately recognize; Doc Brown's first demonstration to Marty of the time machine, and while I wont spoil what happens next, let's just say things don't quite go the way they did originally.

Back to the Future: The Game (photos)

These events set Marty (the player) off on an adventure that takes him to Hill Valley, 1931 with Doc Brown's life at stake.

The puzzles aren't as zany as some of the old Lucasarts ones and feel somewhat more logical. As a result, the puzzles are in general, fairly easy; however, there were a couple that compelled me to use the game's great built-in hint system. The hint system gives you progressively more straightforward hints each time you use it. The last tier, basically spelling out "give X to Y, to get desired result." A great tool for those that just want to fly through to get the story.

Graphically, the game has stylized art style that takes some getting used to, but I've come to love it over my 3 hours or so with this first episode. Christopher Lloyd returns to voice Doc Brown (and possibly one other character) and AJ LoCasio takes on voice of Marty McFly, delivering an incredibly accurate impression.

Controls also took some getting used to and were more than a little frustrating especially during scenes where camera angle changes constantly. Luckily, Marty will b-line to areas of interest when you click on them.

This first of five episodes can be finished within about three to four hours and for $24.99 you get all five episodes to be released over the next few months. There's not a lot a lot of replay value here, but that's par for the course with games of this genre.

As I insinuated before, I absolutely love this world and its characters. BTTF builds on that established lore without besmirching it. Fans of the series should not hesitate to buy this up. If you're not a fan--well, come on. Who's not a fan?

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latest Netbook packs in higher tech "Asus"

A new Asus Eee PC may be, under the hood, one of the most advanced laptops on the market today.

Tablets are getting a lot of attention these days as the next big thing in portable computing. That may well be the case, but enticing new Netbooks and Netbook/tablet hybrids are emerging, giving this mobile category a new luster, as as I wrote recently.

One of the most remarkable Netbook designs is the Asus Eee PC 1015PEM. From a pure, on-paper standpoint, this clusters key cutting-edge tech that few laptops--or tablets for that matter--can match.

Collection of new Netbooks--including dual-core models--displayed last week at the Intel Developer Forum.

(Credit: Brooke Crothers)

USB 3.0: There are only a handful of laptops (typically priced above $1,000) on the market from top-tier vendors with USB 3.0 ports. Now we have an inexpensive Netbook offered in some configurations with this connection technology, which delivers up to 10 times the data transfer speeds of the USB 2.0 ports used in virtually all laptops today.

Asus Eee PC 1015PEM's connection and silicon integration technologies are ahead of most laptops.

(Credit: Asus)

Bluetooth 3.0: This is another new

connection technology boasting much greater data throughput and not seen on a lot of mobile devices today. Intel dual-core Atom processor: This is Intel's first dual-core chip for Netbookdelivering the multitasking goodness of multicore processors. The beauty of this chip is its high level of integration: Intel has already manufactured a chip that Advanced Micro Devices has been talking about for years (but has yet to make). That is, a single piece of silicon that fuses the CPU (main processor) with GPU (graphics chip). And the extra oomph from the second processor doesn't affect battery life materially. In fact, Asus is claiming 13 hours on one charge. Likely overstated but if actual battery life is two-thirds of what Asus claims, this is still way ahead of most laptops.

All of this points to an interesting trend that may develop over the next 12 months or so. To date, larger laptops have been the bastion of the latest and greatest mobile PC technology. Some of this may begin to shift, however, to Netbooks as they come to represent one of the most viable alternatives to tablets.

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Two numbers on the same phone

We promised it to you last month, and here is CNET's first review of a dual SIM card cell phone. We know the Duet D888 from Beyond E-Tech is not the first dual SIM phone ever, but it is the first one we've reviewed. Even better, it is the first dual SIM card phone widely available in the United States. You can get it for $199 from National Geographic and Cellular Abroad.

With the D888, you can make calls and send texts from two numbers on the same handset. Outside of a few usability quirks, the arrangement works quite well. Believe us when we say that Duet is a pretty average phone otherwise. Call quality is decent, but the D888 feels a little cheap in the hand and it doesn't offer any outstanding features. Yet even with those caveats, the two SIM card slots are enough to warrant a look.

Get the full scoop in our Duet D888 review.

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Sony 2009 line show: Complete coverage

companies Most use the January Consumer Electronics Show to show the world their product lineup for the new year. But Sony deliberately holds back on its CES announcements; that's because the company waits about eight weeks before returning to Las Vegas to have its own Sony-centric launch event, where it touts its new products for dealers, retailers, and journalists.

Here are the highlights of the company's new March announcements. We've also included the CES product highlights, to give you an overview of Sony's complete 2009 lineup:

Home Theater

New 2009 Sony AV receivers: Here comes the gloss

Sony dishes out three five-disc DVD home theater in a box systems

Sony slims component home theater system

Sony lowers price on Blu-ray home theater systems

Sony unveils HT-CT500 soundbar/subwoofer combo

ony's BDP-S560 Blu-ray player goes wireless

Television

Sony wings 'W' LCDs with Yahoo widgetsEco-friendly

Sony HDTVs sense your presence (CES)

Sony's Z-series of LCDs gets widgets, 240Hz (CES)

Sony XBR9 HDTVs up interactive ante with widgets (CES)

Photos: Sony 2009 HDTVs (CES)

Cameras and Camcorders

Sony shows speedy CMOS superzoom

Sony's first to market with GPS-enabled, back-illuminated CMOS camcorder (CES)

Sony's spring camcorders: Changes at the extremes (CES)Does

Sony DSC-G3 camera get wireless right? (CES)

Not dead yet: Sony rolls out two DVD-based Handycams (CES)

Sony's new Flash-based Handycam puts an HD camcorder in your pocket (CES)

Sony takes on Flip Video, in Technicolor (CES)

Sony offers up Web camcorder with 5X zoom (CES)

Sony evolves its AVCHD hard-disk camcorders (CES)

Portable Audio

Sony updates EX headphone lineup

Sony boombox mistaken for magic toadstool

Sony Dream Machine for cheap, humble dreams

Sony confirms touch-screen X-Series Walkman (CES)

Sony W-Series Walkman: Wearable and wireless (CES)

Car Tech

Sony expands Xplod line of in-dash receivers (CES)

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Sony springs a couple new Cyber-shot W models for Spring

The W290 comes in a rather subdued palette of colors

(Credit: Sony Electronics)

Joining the lower-middle middle-class W220 that Sony announced at CES are the $199 middle middle-class W230 and $249 upper-middle middle-class W290. (Sorry folks, but I'm running out of ways to describe mid-priced cameras.) While the W230 only differs from the W220 by $10 and LCD size--it's 3 inches vs. 2.7--the W290 has the same resolution and LCD as the W230 but with a significantly more flexible lens and better movie capture capabilities.

Photos: Sony Cyber-shot W models for Spring

In fact, based on the specifications the W290 sounds like a better deal than the W300. It's about $80 less (including Sony recent price drop on the W300 by $20). And though it's only 12 megapixels compared to the W300's 13.6, that's a pretty trivial difference compared to the nontrivial advantage the W290's 3-inch LCD, wide-angle 5X 28-140mm-equivalent lens and 30fps 720p MPEG-4 movie capture offer over the W300's 2.7-incher, narrow angle 3X zoom lens and VGA video. The W290 also includes Sony's latest automatic scene and face detection technologies, and doesn't include the hideously annoying and confusing Home menu anymore. If it's not abysmally slow and doesn't produce terrible photos, I think the W290 might be a mainstream contender for 2009. We'll get one, get going and get back to you when it's available later this Spring.

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