Oh, the woes of the Hong Kong-based geek. Every gadget fanatic needs a shopping mall, but Windsor House, Wan Chai Computer Mall and Shamshuipo just do not make the cut. Being one of those unfortunates who live outside San Francisco and Akihabara in Tokyo, I am always lusting after hardware that will never appear on shelves here.
If money was not a problem, I probably would buy up every gadget that falls off Sony's production line, except the Aibo. Whinging robotic dogs that need more cajoling and attention than a boyfriend are not really my idea of a cool toy.
If I had US$3,899 to part with, I would love to get my hands on Sony's Vaio GT3, which is not available outside Japan. The GT3 is every amateur movie-maker's dream come true. It is a hybrid notebook PC and digital video camera, running on a Transmeta Crusoe 677Mhz chip which allows video to be recorded and then edited straight off the ultra-portable laptop.
Weighing just 1.1 kilograms, which makes it as light as my Compaq Armada M300, the GT3 is power in a small package. Considering that Sony made only 5,000 of the GT3, the price seemed reasonable.
According to Sony, the device can operate up to 17 hours with the high-capacity batteries. The GT3 comes with 30 Gb of hard disk, which is a little small and definitely insufficient for high-power users doing a lot of video editing.
The notebook comes with Windows 2000 professional or ME. To enhance video editing, it is equipped with an ATI RAGE Mobility-M1 graphics chip with 8Mb of video Ram. It can take up to a 256Mb Ram and comes with 128Mb Ram.