Panasonic news and reviews

T-Mobile's push to rid the planet of landlines with their T-Mobile HotSpot @Home UMA program has started to catch on. The idea of dropping your traditional landline in favor of using your wireless minutes at home is getting more and more traction around the world. I personally haven't used a landline (although I subscribe to digital phone service in order to get the bundled TV/internet/phone deal on the cheap) in a handful of years. Why pay extra for a landline when you can just use your huge daily allotment of wireless minutes (you do have plenty of wireless minutes, don't you)?

Well, Panasonic has realized that a major barrier to wireless-only adoption by many city-dwellers will be the lack of wireless/cellular reception while indoors. It's great and all to promote the use of mobile phones in all places at all times, but that idea falls flat in the face of poor reception. So, Panny has drummed up the Panasonic Link To Cell base station.

The Link To Cell is basically a Bluetooth connected base station that tethers to your cellphone. Just as a Bluetooth headset will ring/vibrate when your cellphone receives an incoming call, the Panasonic Link To Cell will ring your home phone handset when you get an incoming call on your mobile phone.

Your cellphone connects to a single Link To Cell base station, allowing you to place the cellphone that one particular corner that gets good signal reception. All the receiving handsets connect to the base station. You can connect up to six satellite handsets throughout the house, and each handset is equipped with DECT 6.0, talking caller ID, a night mode (determine when the phone rings and when to stay silent), ringerID (set different ringtones for different callers), and call block. As a nice, green-touch, the Panasonic home phone handsets are RoHS certified.

If 100% wireless is your goal but you just don't have the cellular coverage inside your house to make truly landline-less living a reality, give the Panasonic Link To Cell a go.  It's available now for $99.99, which includes one home phone handset. Each additional handset will cost $39.99.

Panasonic

[Via: Gadgetell]

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Related Articles at IntoMobile:

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• European Union may be getting in-flight cellphone use soon
• Sony Ericsson P990 goes LocationFree
• Expand your wireless network - find the nearest COW!
• UK Office of Communications to allow in-flight cellphone calls - OfCom plan allows voice calls

Panasonic has already revised its ToughBook 19 rugged tablet PC by ditching the Core Duo U2400 1.06Ghz processor in favor of the Intel Core 2 Duo U7500 1.06GHz processor. The clock speed might be the same, but this new architecture ensures that the system will be more energy efficient and faster when it comes to number-crunching moments. The initial memory that comes with the ToughBook has also been doubled to 1GB, with a maximum of 4GB. As for the hard drive, the previous 60GB model has been bumped up to 80GB. You can choose from an integrated camera version and one without, with the former retailing for $3,699 while the latter is going for $3,199. Everything else about its toughness remains, so feel free to drop it onto a concrete floor whenever you’re frustrated your Excel spreadsheets don’t add up.

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Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-TZ50 brings WiFi connectivity with you wherever you are, allowing you to upload images from any WiFi hotspot. Unfortunately, you will be limited to specific image sharing sites such as Panasonic’s very own Lumix Club. Hopefully as the TZ50 is released worldwide, a more open model will be made available. After all, who doesn’t yet have a Flickr or Picasa account? The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ50 will be released in Japan this May 16th, retailing for approximately $500 after conversion.

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New LUMIX FX500 Packs 3-inch LCD with Touch-Screen Operation, 5x Optical Zoom and 10.1 megapixels in Slim and Compact Design

SECAUCUS, NJ – Panasonic announces the LUMIX DMC-FX500, the company’s first digital camera with a 3-inch touch-screen LCD – also featuring a 25mm ultra-wide-angle Leica DC lens, 5x optical zoom and 10.1 megapixels. With a dual control system using both touch-screen and joystick operation, the ability to record High Definition (HD) video and advanced Intelligent Auto technologies, the FX500 packs innovative features and intuitive design, helping consumers enrich the digital photography experience and take better photos.

“With the FX500’s touch-screen operation, we are giving our consumers a new interface that we think will prove extremely intuitive during playback, photo organization and of course – helping to take high-quality photos,” said Alex Fried, National Marketing Manager, Imaging, Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company. “The FX500 represents a new flagship model for Panasonic, as we add brand-new capabilities to our already popular, slim and stylish FX-Series of LUMIX digital cameras and we introduce another model that features a 25mm ultra-wide-angle lens.”

The FX500 has a hybrid control system that combines joystick control with touch-screen operation, so users can make fine adjustments by touch, using their finger, or the LUMIX stylus-pen that comes with the FX500. In manual exposure mode, adjustments can be made using the on-screen sliders to adjust aperture and shutter speeds. Users can also set the auto focus and exposure in frames by simply touching the subject, on scftp://ftp.panasonic.com/pub/Panasonic/consumer_electronics/images/FX500s_with_Pen.jpgreen, while recording. In playback mode, a new Easy Organization menu allows for photos to be selected and viewed by scrolling through the thumbnails located below the main window. Then, users can edit the titles using an on-screen keyboard.

The FX500 expands Panasonic’s family of wide-angle LUMIX digital cameras and joins the Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FX35 as an ultra-wide-angle lens with a 25mm wide-angle lens, which can capture almost double the photo area at the same shooting distance compared with a conventional 35mm lens*. Also new to the FX500 is Auto Focus (AF) tracking, a feature that tracks the photo subject even if it moves after the AF is set – especially helpful for catching active children or pets.

Panasonic’s iA (Intelligent Auto) mode is an advanced system of technologies that engage automatically, so the user does not have to change any settings. Maximizing the iA mode, users can go a step further and easily set auto focus and exposure by simply touching the screen. This kind of quick, easy operation is made possible with the touch-screen technology.

· Intelligent Exposure – To help correct photos from being under- or over-exposed, the FX500 instantly analyzes the framed image and adjusts the brightness in areas that are too dark because of dim lighting, backlighting or the use of the flash.

· Digital Red-eye Correction– Helps eliminate the red-eye problem that sometimes results when taking flash shots at the night. Incorporated into the built-in flash, the camera emits a small preliminary flash before the main flash, detects red-eye and digitally corrects it.

· MEGA O.I.S. – Gyrosensors detect hand-shake and the lens system shifts to compensate, helping to prevent hand-shake from creating a blurry image.

· Intelligent ISO – Determines if the photo subject is moving and changes the ISO setting and shutter speed accordingly.

· Intelligent Scene Selector – Senses the ambient conditions, recognizes the shooting environment and automatically selects the appropriate scene mode from: Scenery, Portrait, Macro, Night Portrait or Night Scenery mode.

· Face Detection – Detects faces anywhere in the frame and automatically chooses the optimal focus and exposure settings so portraits come out clear and crisp. Detecting up to 15 faces, Panasonic’s Face Detection can even track a face if the subject is moving.

· Continuous AF – Maintains focus on the subject even without the user pressing a shutter button halfway, thus minimizing the AF time.

Other features include its ability to take1280 x 720p HD video content and still photos with a 16:9 aspect ratio, perfect for viewing on an HDTV. In addition, the FX500 incorporates the Venus Engine IV processor, featuring more advanced digital signal processing technology for taking even higher-quality images. The fdsa proprietary Venus Engine IV also heightens the detection accuracy and corrective features in both MEGA O.I.S. and Intelligent ISO Control.

The Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FX500 will be available in black and silver models for a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $399.95 in May 2008.

*35mm film camera equivalent: 25-125mm