HP's Voodoo Envy 133, first announced in June, has struggled a bit off the blocks, with manufacturing problems keeping it out of buyers hands until last month. Of course, HP has a good excuse: carbon fiber. The notoriously difficult material wasn't used sparingly on the Envy 133, and if you've been looking for a laptop dripping with the synthetic material, HP's got your number. We mention this to remind ourselves that, like the MacBook Air before it, this laptop is about looks first, function second, and the Envy 133 succeeds in that regard wildly. There's always room for taste in these things, but HP makes quite a statement here no matter what your persuasion. We're not going to run through a full review here, but we'll let you know our first impressions after the break.

Remember that Wii Speak microphone that Nintendo announced at E3 for Animal Crossing socialization, and then everyone promptly forgot about? Well, shuffled in with its other announcements yesterday, Nintendo announced the Wii Speak channel, that will allow for up to four people to voice chat directly without all that pesky fishing and digging and tea sipping and cute getting in the way. Unfortunately, literally nothing else is known about the feature -- we're curious if we can use that USB mic we got for karaoke, and we're sure you have burning questions of your own, but Nintendo's clearly going to debut this feature and the related hardware in its own sweet time.

[Via Joystiq]

We heard last night that we wouldn't be seeing the DSi in the States until next year, and now Reggie has confirmed the damage: no DSi until "well into calendar year 2009," which sounds disturbingly like the holidays to us, but hopefully he's just implying a few months in. We would hope Nintendo would be following the pattern of the DS Lite, which hit Japan in March of 2006, and made it Stateside in June, but Reggie says DS Lite sales are still strong in the US -- which means it's basically our fault that we don't get a shiny new toy for Christmas.

She's arrived at last, the 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia's tardy entry into the (modern) touchscreen phone space, and we've gotten some quality face time with the device. Appropriately nicknamed the Tube, the device has a number of Nokia peculiarities that could appeal to certain sensibilities, but probably won't be taking a big bite out of existing touchphone market share -- at least in the S60-phobic United States. Let's dig in, shall we?

Yeah, we got all the sordid details from Japan last night, but in case you have a partiality to getting your news in English and US-centric, Joystiq is liveblogging the Nintendo fall media summit from San Francisco. Head on over to get your fix.

While that touchscreen trackpad MBP might've been a bit too much to swallow, the rumorists certainly won't be giving up that easily, and have returned with more intriguing shots of what may be (but probably isn't) the next MacBook Pro. Submitted by "Techno Minds" to modmyi.com, the pictures were purportedly gotten off an Apple employee on an Apple design team. The dock-in-the-touchpad has been done away with, but the trackpad is still black, as is the keyboard and the display bezel. What's new here is the black back to the display and a lack of those Air-inspired curves that looked so janky on that other picture. The thing that amazingly makes this all even less plausible is the done-up promo shot (after the break) with rendering and photoshop artifacts unobscured by cameraphone fuzziness. Oh, and there's no power button to be found on any of these shots. Still, we want.

[Via Nowhere Else]

Yeah, the solution seemed pretty obvious to us, and now it looks like Nintendo's willing to admit it. Nintendo will be solving its little Wii Shop game storage overflow problem by opening up the SD card slot for storing and playing games from (with DRM galore, we're sure). The update will hit in the Spring of next year, and don't forget that 2GB maximum when stocking up on the little buggers. It's not exactly as exciting as a new DS, but we're really glad Nintendo's going to do the right thing here, instead of building yet another peripheral to clutter our lives with.

Look, we're talking three years from now, anything could happen by then. Singularity, jetpacks, you name it. So a teensy bit of HD graphics from Nintendo doesn't seem like too much to ask, does it? The filthy-rich company is purportedly showing off just such a Wii-followup to developers and publishers in the industry, who are nicknaming it "Wii HD" for the time being. A true sequel to the Wii, the followup will apparently stick with the core competencies (motion controls), while beefing up visuals (yes, please!), digital distribution, local storage and including backwards compatibility. The only hard evidence cited by What They Play, which originated the rumor, is that Nintendo's R&D spending has grown dramatically since the launch of the Wii. We're sure that cash is also being poured into the new DS and a number of other projects, but it's really not much of a stretch to figure Nintendo's working on a Wii successor two years into the Wii's highly-successful life cycle. All we've got to say is that a few of these improvements really shouldn't wait until 2011, and still others are long overdue.

[Thanks, JC]

Microsoft couldn't let the gory, highly-anticipated launch of Gears of War 2 (chainsaw duels! Rhhhahaararggg!) pass without bloodying a Zune or three in the process, Halo 3-style. Specifically, Microsoft has laser-etched that pesky little "Crimson Omen" onto a glossy black Zune 120, pre-loaded the device with 244 pieces of "Gears of War" media -- the soundtrack, concept art, behind-the-scenes vids and so forth, nothing you won't be able to find elsewhere -- and squeezed it all into some "collectible" Gears packaging, featuring our testosterone-addled protagonist pondering the meaning of life. The whole kit will run you $280, with pre-orders at Walmart.com and Amazon.com (and a whole mess of Canadian shops) starting at 3AM PT / 6AM ET. It'll start shipping on November 7th. And still can't sync to your Xbox. Close-ups after the break.

Bad / good news, folks: Nintendo is / isn't working on a pedometer peripheral that will / won't integrate with its Wii / DS console. The company has famously stated that it doesn't plan to release "a whole lot more" accessories for the Wii, which means we've got at least one or two to look forward to, and this could be one of 'em. The images surfaced on a European trademark registry site with very little supplemental info, but we do know it's a pedometer of sorts. If we're lucky, this is something that'll integrate into the existing Wii Fit setup, perhaps alongside a software update to manage more info about our unhealthiness than just how far we can jump on a pair of imaginary skis, but it's probably just as likely that we're looking at a Wii Fit sequel, or perhaps a DS version (a handy companion to that new DS?) designed to lure us out of the house. No telling, really, but the peripheral does appear to be wireless... and wholly evil.

[Via Joystiq]

We knew we'd be seeing a comeback of the Give One, Get One program this year, and now OLPC has confirmed a November 17 date -- just in time for the holidays, how convenient for everyone! We're still not certain on a price, but $399 is quite likely. It's not like they're doing the volume right now to drive those costs down, and the component-reduced XO 1.5, which is supposed to actually get close to hitting OLPC's $100 laptop goals, won't be landing until next spring. Dual-booting to XP is still unconfirmed.

[Thanks, Charbax]

In our perpetual search for the perfect "miniature PMP that just so happens to play SNES games with a reasonable control scheme," the Oppo Muse G11 is certainly a forerunner. We swooned when we saw those swivel-display technical drawings, and now Oppo has the first prototype of the device out and about. We're still a little short on tech specs, but as long as that mystery processor is prepared to draw Chrono Trigger with pixel-perfect precision, we couldn't care less.

[Via PMP Today]

Look, there are a hundred reasons to think this might be fake. That janky right corner, the inexplicable "dock in the trackpad" conundrum, the odd lighting and the entirely-too-convenient iSight self portrait. Still, whoever made this has their finger on the pulse of the Apple faithful -- or pretty much anyone else that thinks Apple is long overdue for a MacBook Pro refresh. We've got Air-inspired curves, a touchscreen trackpad, aluminum and glass in the style of Apple's latest iMacs, and what appear to be separated keys, which have been slow in coming to the MacBook Pro holdout. Naturally there's zero info on who the source is, and we're expecting a "hah, I totally fooled you guys" to spring up at any moment, but there's clearly some pent up demand for this thing if the rumor mill is any indication.

Never one to settle, Art Lebedev's design shop is trying its hand at handset design, and we like the looks of it. Art is teaming up with Scartel, a Russian carrier which just launched a WiMax network in Moscow and St. Petersburg, for a flagship handset of sorts, and has left no spec unturned -- at least in the wishful-thinking conceptual stage. In addition to a WiMax radio, the device has WiFi, tri-band GSM, microSD, dual cameras, 3.5mm audio, an A/V plug and a gargantuan 850 x 480 screen. There are minimal buttons at the base: a five-way joystick and call / end, and no keypad, so we're going to assume that we're looking at a touchscreen device. Now all that's left is to pick an OS -- would Android be too much to ask? Another shot is after the fold.

[Via Pocket-lint]

T-Mobile, HTC and Google stood hand in hand yesterday to debut the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. It felt a bit like a new era for the mobile industry -- though the rollerblading seemed a tad out of place -- with high-profile companies backing a Linux-based, touch-driven mobile OS, and spouting the word "open" every two sentences. But, naturally, high aims alone don't build a killer phone; there are a lot details to get right, and a lot more that Google and company have seen fit to leave in the hands of developers. Let's take a look at what's working so far, and what might need some more time in the oven: