Joining the mob of celebrities who endorse things, Dr. Dre has teamed up with Monster to create a headset worthy of his name: the Monster Beats By Dr. Dre. The headset, originally announced at CES in January, will be available for purchase in mid-July, says Monster.

A few folks from Monster visited our offices today to give us an audio preview of the headset (look for a review very soon on PCMag.com; we'll link to it when it pubs). Click through the jump for some initial impressions.

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At this year's CES, peripherals maker Amax introduced two new LED flashlights. The Zeus, priced at $50 features a rechargeable LI-Ion battery. You can focus the beam of the Zeus with one hand, and a serrated edge is designed for self defense, or, in an automobile emergency, to break glass. Amax claims that you can illuminate targets up to 500 feet away, and the emergency strobe function can be seen for over a mile.

The Mini Zeus, priced at $30, lacks the strobe feature and runs on 3 triple-A batteries. ...

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This fabulous new Taser is almost too bizarre to be true (and speaking of "reality," I can just see one of the real housewives of OC toting this baby around. Goes so well with the LBD and Laboutin pumps, and comes in very handy in those drunken girl-on-girl disagreements.) You can order your own now at Taser's site, just $379.

Also introduced at CES: the "new, innovative Taser MPH (Music Player Holster) which is a combination MP3 player and TASER C2 holster." Now that's just silly.

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iDen gets no love. Nextel is turning it off, someday, and here in the U.S., the network seems to have been mostly reduced to Boost customers shouting "where you at?" at the top of their lungs. But over in Motorola's booth at CES, I got a gander of a brand new, never-before-seen iDen unit: the i877.

The i877, superficially, looks a lot like previous Pininfarina design phones, but a Moto rep standing nearby said it was running Motorola's new Linux/Java OS. It'll probably be coming to Mexico and Argentina before it comes to ...

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iDen gets no love. Nextel is turning it off, someday, and here in the U.S., the network seems to have been mostly reduced to Boost customers shouting "where you at?" at the top of their lungs. But over in Motorola's booth at CES, I got a gander of a brand new, never-before-seen iDen unit: the i877.

The i877, superficially, looks a lot like previous Pininfarina design phones, but a Moto rep standing nearby said it was running Motorola's new Linux/Java OS. It'll probably be coming to Mexico and Argentina before it comes to ...

Read entire article

iDen gets no love. Nextel is turning it off, someday, and here in the U.S., the network seems to have been mostly reduced to Boost customers shouting "where you at?" at the top of their lungs. But over in Motorola's booth at CES, I got a gander of a brand new, never-before-seen iDen unit: the i877.

The i877, superficially, looks a lot like previous Pininfarina design phones, but a Moto rep standing nearby said it was running Motorola's new Linux/Java OS. It'll probably be coming to Mexico and Argentina before it comes to ...

Read entire article

The lines for Panasonic President Toshihiro Sakamoto's opening CES keynote were not quite as ridiculous as those that snaked around the Venetian for Bill Gates' Sunday address, but the slew of product announcements from the Japanese electronics company were far more impressive than anything previewed during Gates' final CES keynote (yes, even Slash).

For one, Sakamoto introduced a massive 150-inch plasma TV, which will be the world's largest. Panasonic is building an entirely new, five million square foot factory in Japan that will produce these enormous TVs, which are expected to hit ...

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The week before CES (the Consumer Electronics Show, which starts on Monday in Las Vegas) is sort of like the week before Christmas, at least for technology journalists and geeks of all stripes. Excitement's in the air, and you just don't know what surprises you'll encounter. Apparently, HP couldn't take the pressure of all that expectation: It's already unveiled a few things show attendees will see next week.

One is the HP Pavilion HDX series Entertainment Notebook PC, which offers 512MB nVidia GeForce 8800M GTS video graphics, along with the ...

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This question from reader Michael came in for PC Magazine lead analyst Robert Heron:

I've got an HDTV that supports 1080p over component (or so they tell me--the Samsung HL-S5688W), and I currently have my Xbox 360 hooked up via component. I'm one of those poor folks who bought their 360s before they started coming with HDMI connections. I also have the HD-DVD drive for my 360. I love the content, but would really like to be able to use the HD-DVD player as an upcoverting DVD player as well. It's my understanding ...

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Way back in January at CES 2007, RCA announced its Gem Line of portable media players, and today, the company reiterated its intention to release said players. The morning press conference was held among the caged beasts at the... Read entire article