The Fabulous Most Expensive Cars in the World

10. While the Maybach brand was initially founded in 1909, it was reintroduced by Daimler Chrysler in 2002 to compete with Rolls Royce and Bentley. Six years later, the “Luxury Brand Status Index” voted the Maybach as the #1 luxury car– ahead of both Bentley and Rolls. If price is any indicator, the Maybach 62 runs at $390,000, a good $50k higher than a Rolls Royce Phantom and $200k higher than a Bentley Continental GTC. What does that extra scratch get you? The ultimate in luxury, powered by a 5.5L twin-turbo V12 engine pushing 612 horses.

BMW's Vision Efficient Dynamic Design concept for Frankfurt

BMW has revealed a radical vision for its future performance-oriented models in a spectacularly styled concept car whose combination of M3-rivaling acceleration and Mini Cooper-beating fuel economy will likely make it one of the stars of this year's Frankfurt motor show.

At the heart of the concept car is an advanced diesel-electric hybrid system, based on a compact turbocharged 1.5-liter, three-cylinder common-rail diesel engine that will first appear in the second-generation 1-series due in 2011.The front-mounted engine features a gutsy 163 hp and 214 lb-ft of torque, making it more powerful than the latest and most-economical version of BMW's existing turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder. It channels drive to the rear wheels via a version of the Getrag-developed six-speed dual-clutch gearbox introduced on the M3.

The diesel engine is supported by a pair of electric motors mounted at the front of the gearbox, one supplying drive to the rear wheels, the other to the front wheels via a single-speed transmission.

New Sony S Series Walkman with Built-In Speakers

New Sony S Series Walkman with Built-In Speakers. It supports MP3, WMA, AAC audio files and H.264 and WMV videos. Two versions are available with both a 8GB and 16GB.

“By outfitting this Walkman with internal speakers, we feel that we are adding a new social element to the world of digital music and video,” said Katie O’Brien, manger of the Walkman business for Sony. . “Consumers now have a fast, simple and easy solution for sharing their personal music and video library with others.”



Even with the built-in stereo speakers, the new Sony® S Series Walkman player features a slim, compact and lightweight design, measuring less than a half-inch thin. It has a bright, high-contrast 2.4-inch QVGA LCD screen (measured diagonally) that has an ultra-quick response time, with smooth playback at up to 30 frames per second. And thanks to the unique “Clear Audio” and “Digital Linear Phase Speaker System” technologies in the S Series, this new model carries on Sony’s legacy of superior sound quality, both inside and out.



Further, the S Series Walkman player has an exceptionally long battery life, with up to 42 hours of music playback and up to 6.5 hours of video playback through the headphones. Through the speaker output, the new model features up to 17 hours of music playback and up to 5 hours of video playback.



The new S Series player supports a variety of codecs, both of the audio and video variety. Audio codecs supported include MP3, WMA(DRM), AAC(non DRM) and Linear PCM. The video codec support includes AVC (H.264/AVC) Baseline Profle, MPEG-4 and WMV(DRM). The new model also supports JPEG photo format.

JVC Everio X GZ-X900

We first encountered the Everio X in its prototype shape back in 2008 at the CEATEC 08, and we fell in love with this new AVCHD compact camcorder. Less than a year after, JVC announced officially the release of the Everio X and finally we had the chance to play with it and give you our feedback.

JVC Everio X GZ-X900 Specs -

• 1/2.33" CMOS, 10.3 Megapixel
• 5x Optical / 8x Dynamic / 200x Digital (max.)
• KONICA MINOLTA HD LENS
• Video: [AVCHD] MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, Audio: Dolby Digital (2ch)
• UXP: 1920x1080i, Avg. 24Mbps (VBR)
• 2.8" 207K-pixel Color LCD

Once you get passed the useless laser thingy, it's time to shoot, and guess what, this camera provides pretty good overall quality. Compared to an Xacti Full HD, the Everio X gives you WAY better video and colorful images. Another good point here is JVC didn't limit its Everio X to only 17Mbps (like many other companys do) but offers a nice 24Mbps.

Basically the higher the number, the less video compression you get and less artifact compression you'll have on the video. As you can see below with the screen captures and 100% crop, video is pretty decent on a not so exceptionally bright day.

Horrible low light video quality… Sorry I didn't shoot any samples, but you will have to take my word on this… I was amazed by the low quality of video shot in low light with many noticeable video noises… Actually you can either turn on Video Boost (giving more noise) or turn it off and not be able to see a thing.

Horrible low light video quality… Sorry I didn't shoot any samples, but you will have to take my word on this… I was amazed by the low quality of video shot in low light with many noticeable video noises… Actually you can either turn on Video Boost (giving more noise) or turn it off and not be able to see a thing.

600fps and 300fps mode… Useless, and I wonder why JVC didn't bother to implement these modes.

600fps and 300fps mode… Useless, and I wonder why JVC didn't bother to implement these modes.

Hitachi Maxell's New 2.1ch Speaker with iPod Dock

Here's another 2.1Ch speaker that happens to also offer an iPod dock. With 5Wx2ch, it can be used with a wide variety of other DAPs and even PCs.It will be sold in August for (€149).

NEC Boosts Their Versa Pro Ultra Lite

The VersaPro UltraLite Type VC is a nice 12.1” WXGA Notebook powered in its high-end version by a Core 2 Duo SU9400 (1.4GHz) CPU, 1GB of RAM, 64GB of SSD, Wifi ABGN and a HSDPA/HSUPA module locked to NTT. This model will be released shortly

Price - €1873

Valore ION 330-DB, the First Ion Based Mini Desktop with Blu-ray Drive

The Valore ION 330-DB is to my knowledge the first ION based compact desktop to be sold with a Blu-ray disc drive.

Powered by an Atom 330 (1.6ghz), with 4GB of RAM (max and not included), and a 2.5” SATA HDD slot (HDD not included), with HDMI out, Gigabeat, S/PDIF 6x USB 2.0 port for only Fitted with a diNovo Mini you potentially have a nice little HTPC.

Price - €297

Samsung's New SyncMaster 80 Series LCD

The SyncMaster 80 Series is Samsung's high-end professional LCD line-up made to compete with Dell's UltraSharp series.

Available in 20" (F2080) and 23” (F2380), they feature a 3000:1 contrast ratio with a 150000:1 dynamic ratio, a 178 degree view angle, 100% sRGB support and will be sold around (€211 to €266).