IFA Berlin, 28th August 2008 - Everyone’s spoiled for choice with the camera that thinks it’s a camcorder. Now it’s easy to capture your favourite moments as sumptuous stills or HD movie clips with the slim, stylish new Cyber-shot™ T500 from Sony.

Available in a choice of eye-catching piano black, silver and red finishes, the chic T500 is packed with Sony technology to help everyone take better-looking pictures.

Alongside sparkling 10.1 effective megapixel still image quality, it’s the first Cyber-shot™ that captures crisp, clear HD movie clips with stereo sound. New HD movie mode allows continuous shooting time of up to 10 minutes per clip. In total up to 60 mins (approx) of video content can be stored on the supplied 4GB Memory Stick™. Movie files are recorded in ‘PC-friendly’ MPEG4 AVC/H.264 format. This offers great HD picture quality while keeping files down to a minimum size for convenient saving, sharing and viewing via the web or email.

Not sure whether that special moment deserves a photo or a video clip? It’s easy to switch instantly between still and movie modes at the touch of a comfortably placed button on top of the camera. You can even grab crisp still images (1280x720 pixels) without interrupting video shooting.

The superb Carl Zeiss lens features a new ring-type Zoom button, allowing easy adjustment throughout the 5x range while you’re shooting movies.

Detail-packed stills and video clips can be viewed on the extra-large wide 3.5-inch touchscreen LCD. As well as giving a beautiful view of your images, the touchscreen also makes operation of camera functions beautifully simple. Touching anywhere on the screen while you’re composing a shot locks focus on that part of the scene.

Touching a face turns on Face Detection, ensuring that people’s faces in the scene are in sharp focus and with perfect exposure for fewer spoiled shots. Up to eight faces can be tracked at a time, making the T500 ideal for capturing large groups of friends and family.

Shooting handheld without flash can mean blurred pictures, especially when light levels are low or with telephoto shots. Optical SteadyShot is teamed with an improved High Sensitivity mode to allow faster shutter speeds. This ‘Dual Anti-blur’ solution is complemented by Clear RAW Noise Reduction for clean, natural images, even in low-light conditions like parties or twilight.

After you’ve finished shooting, HD Slide Shows add an extra dimension of enjoyment to your collection of photos and videos. Pick from a choice of musical accompaniments, or import your favourite music track from a connected PC.

If you want an even bigger picture, still images and HD movie clips can be experienced with extra impact on your HD Ready television. Connected via HDMI™ to your Sony HD TV, BRAVIA™ Sync allows on-screen control of Cyber-shot™ playback functions using the TV’s remote control.

Supplied Picture Motion Browser software makes it easy to browse and manage pictures and HD movie files on your PC, upload your favourite moments to image sharing sites – or email them to friends and family.

The Cyber-shot™ T500 will be available from October 2008.

Soon joined by the 12-inch X200, the 14.1-inch X400 and the 15.4-inch X500 (all armed with 45nm Penryn processors), customers will be able to pick the precise display size of their choice on one of the most lust-worthy laptops on the market. The X-Series will also feature HSDPA and EVDO, 25% improved battery life, beefy 6MB L2 cache and lots of fanboy drool.

Here's the rest on Lenovo's new ThinkPad line-up:

R-Series (refreshed)
This line will continue representing the entry level. We're light on specs, but we know it will include the R400 (5.1lbs) and R500 (6.4lbs). Expect these to be refreshed in July 2008.

T-Series (refreshed)
This line will continue to represent the mid-range, featuring 256 or 512MB ATI HD3650 discreet graphics that can be turned off to conserve battery life. We don't have sizes, but the T400 will weight 4.3lbs and the T500 will clock in at 5.8lbs. Shipping starts June 3rd, 2008.

W-Series (brand new)
The W-Series is a completely new line. Where the "W" used to stand for "Widescreen," now it stands for "workstation replacement." Described to us as less bulky than similar machines from Dell, the 15-inch W900 will feature the same discreet graphics as the T-Series. A 17-inch version is in the works for the future.

And here's the good stuff:

Many or All Models Will Have:
• 6MB of L2 cache
• Turbo Memory option (think Ready Boost, up to 2GB)
• Blu-ray drive option
• Two PCI Express Slots
• 1.6GHz DDR3 RAM
• LED Backlighting (excludes R Series)
• HSDPA and EVDO (Lenovo claims to have no deals with Sprint)
• 9 cell batteries (same form factor as former 6-cell, 25% more life)
• GPS, WiMAX, and wireless USB are scattered through models
• The x300's solid state hard drive option (excludes W)

Lenovo is starting new ThinkPad manufacturing in May so that there are plenty of units to fuel demand. And from the sound of it, some of the X300's most appealing features are making their way to the entire ThinkPad line. We're just wondering what the pricing will look like between the X200 and X300. Will we be paying a premium for size or for screen space?

Thanks Odd Job!

Plug in a headset and you're free to make calls. The card will track up to 100 missed, dialed and received calls to help you store phonebook information. Have a SIM card handy? A simple utility will automatically detect what card it is and select the best compatible network. You can even receive, edit and send SMS messages in case you don't get enough of that on your phone. Compatibility shouldn't be a problem as the T500 comes ready to handle GPRS/EDGE along with GSM and WCDMA standards. No word yet on pricing or availability, but we'll keep you posted. [Product Page via Fareastgizmos]