Laptop owners may need to start worrying about leaving a laptop in a vehicle.

According to Malaysia's New Straits Times, thieves have been using some type of mysterious gadget to break into cars and steal laptops. In the district of Petaling Jaya, over 255 laptops have been stolen from parked cars so far this year. And police say the majority of these laptops were hidden from sight at the time.

The police haven't been able to find any of the supposed "mystery devices" yet, and are advising people to carry laptops with them rather than leave them in their cars.

Speculation is that the thieves' gadget may be using WiFi and/or Bluetooth to detect the presence of the laptops in the vehicles.

Sounds like a case for CSI, doesn't it?

Can you imagine a cell phone charger powered by water? It's coming.

NTT DoCoMo and Aqua Fairy have partnered together to make the world's smallest fuel cell. It has an output of only 2 watts, and uses thin film power unit technology to create hydrogen from water.

This polymer electrolyte fuel cell (or PEFC, for short) charger doesn't have the problems that earlier Methanol based chargers had, which was their large size and less power output. The PEFC charger is one-fourth the size and twice as powerful as the Methane type - which is good if you're looking for something more portable and more powerful to charge your devices' batteries.

The prototype PEFC produces 800mAh at 3.6V, which is enough power to recharge the average cell phone in the same amount of time it takes to plug it into a wall outlet. Amazing, right?

The NTT DoCoMo PEFC charger will go into production next year, but prototypes can be seen at Wireless Japan 2006.

Who needs a PC for VoIP Wi-Fi functionality? With the WLAN800I phone, all you need is an 802.11b/g wireless access point connected to the internet.

The company BCM has a multi-format VoIP Wi-Fi phone based on the Windows CE kernel. The WLAN800I is compatible with Skype, SIP services, MSN Talk, and MSN Messenger.

The battery life is approximately 60 hours in standby mode and it has around three hours of talk time. A mini-USB connector is used as the charger.

It features a built in media player, and you can watch your media in 65,000 colors on a 2.2 in screen with 240 x 320 pixel resolution. The WLAN800 also has 32MB of flash memory and 64MB of SDRAM.

The cell can connect to someone using a web camera through MSN Messenger, of course, they still can't see you. Ah well. Another bit of coolness is the ability to store 10 wireless profiles for quick access for when you move between wireless access points, it also supports major hotspot companies, such as T-Mobile. Support is available for WEP and WPA encryption, and  DHCP and static IP addresses.

How about other features? Well, the WLAN800 supports three-way calling, and has vibration mode, true tones ring tones, a phone book with 250 contacts, call history for the last 20 dialed numbers, and a web browser.

The WLAN800 is expected to be released in mid July, but so far there's no distributor in the UK.

Ever have trouble moving content between your phone and your computer? Well, that may be getting a bit easier. NTT DoCoMo of Japan announced it will be porting Windows Media DRM (Digital Rights Management) to its 3G handsets, which will mean content can be moved between phones and PCs bypassing the Open Mobile Alliance DRM.

Microsoft will grab a big customer base with Windows Media technologies on all NTT DoCoMo's FOMA 3G handsets. And the agreement will also mean an alliance of partners in DoCoMo's i-Mode mobile internet platform who may be looking to put Microsoft DRM into their devices, too.

How many people could this affect? Well, i-Mode has 250m subscribers in 15 countries, and over 50m use the content and internet platform. Most handset makers don't want to port Windows Media DRM to anything other than Windows Mobile, since it gives Microsoft a foothold to build on their phone architecture. However, it may be good for us consumers down the road. By supporting Windows Media Audio and potentially adding VC-1, a Windows Media bundled codec, phones could have direct access to online music and video services, with or without a connection to a PC.

DoCoMo's F902iS model, scheduled to ship this summer will be the first to include Microsoft's Windows Media Audio and Digital Rights Management 10 software. DoCoMo says they are evaluating Microsoft's Windows Media Video for future handsets. Support for Windows Media technologies means that these phones will work with over 100 online music services.

Now, the question is whether Microsoft's Windows Media DRM will be licensed to other, non-Microsoft platforms, and offered to other operators.

UMPC alert! The TabletKiosk has landed. We told you about this unit earlier but it wasn't available at that time. The TabletKiosk eo V7110 shipped today and according to PDA Live, it's the first UMPC to arrive in the US. And bonus... It's one of the cheapest UMPC's yet, at a mere $900.

This model has 256MB of memory, a 30GB hard drive, 1.0 GHz VIA C7 NaNo processor, 7-inch TFT-LCD touchscreen, Wi-Fi, and runs on Windows XP Tablet Edition. A higher-end model featuring double the RAM and a larger hard drive will market for $999. Both versions are available in stylish black or white. Sounds kind of ipod-like, doesn't it?

Is Dell ending production on their Axim PDAs? Well, Jnolan posted on the PDALive.com community forums that as he was watching DL.TV today when he heard the news.

Apparently, on the April 11th episode Patrick Norton reported he heard from someone at Dell that Dell will not be making any more new PDAs.

JNolan said the show said you can still purchase existing PDA's that Dell has made, but they will not be developing or releasing any new PDAs.

Anyone else heard this news?  Let us know.

Looking for ThinkPad notebooks or Lenovo PCs? Your new source could be North America's largest consumer electronics retailer - Best Buy. CNET News.com reports that Lenovo will begin selling ThinkPad notebooks and the new Lenovo 3000 series PCs at Best Buy; the deal is expected to be announced Tuesday. ThinkPads haven't been widely marketed to consumers in several years, but Lenovo has been interested in selling the PCs to a bigger audience since it bought IBM's PC branch in December 2004. Best Buy will sell both 3000 series notebooks and desktops, and ThinkPads and Lenovo's ThinkCentre desktops, the report said.
It's not known when the new systems will be available at Best Buy.

If you're on the market for a PDA-type cellphone, the SPV M600 from Orange may be the phone for you. According to a review at RegHardware, this may be the best Windows Mobile smart phone available.

The reviewer says the new control design makes the SPV M600 easier to use than earlier devices. Four new buttons: two soft keys, a Start menu button and an OK button make control easier. On the left side are three controls: the top one starts the camera application, the middle is the volume rocker, and there’s a new button that launches the Comm Manager if pressed briefly or the voice recorder if held in. The Comm Manager allows you to set the phone to flight mode, enable the Wi-Fi radio, enable silent mode, turn Bluetooth on and off, and enable the sync applications.

The top of the SPV M600 has a slot for a standard-size SD card, which also supports SD IO cards. On the right side is the stylus, the power button, and the infrared window. On the bottom is a 2.5mm audio jack and a mini USB 2.0 port. The camera at the rear has been upgraded from the M500 to two-megapixel resolution and a macro mode, with no flash. There’s also a loud speaker.

The processor is a kind of slow Texas Instruments OMAP 850 at 195MHz, the reviewer said. The Flash memory has been increased from the M500's 64MB to 128MB. The RAM is still set at 64MB, though you could upgrade. The phone has a quad-band GSM radio, and the M600 also supports EDGE for faster GPRS data transfers. The M600 has Bluetooth 2.0 which is handy for faster wireless data synchronisation and it supports 802.11g.

The screen is still a 2.8in, 240 x 320 LCD. But according to the review, you can flip the display into landscape mode, for better use with certain apps, websites, and the camera application. He said the screen seems to collect dust and is awkward to clean. Still, it's easy to read in most light except for direct sunlight. The battery's charge seemed to last a long time, and you should get three or four days use from a single charge.

The boxed accessories include a USB-to-mini-USB cable, a charger, a carry case, and a stereo headset with microphone.

Overall, their reviewer says the Orange SPV M600 is a good Windows Mobile 5 smart phone at a low price. It doesn't have 3G support, but with EDGE you still get fairly decent download speeds and, if you need faster access, the built-in Wi-Fi gives you the option to access wireless hotspots.

The OnHand PC wrist PDA just went the way of the dinosaur. Matsucom, the manufacturer of the OnHand PC, has stopped making the Dick Tracy-like gadget. The OnHandPC had the power and memory of a Palm m100.

The OnHand PC started its short lifespan in 2003. Ah, in those days PDA phones were just hitting the market. However, smart phones are now putting a hurting on PDAs, and so the OnHand PC won't likely be on anyone's hands again.

On the other hand, you never know if we won't have a wrist smart phone one of these days...

Here's more cellphone goodness for those folks who want to do more than just talk on their phones.

Modeo will be offering a Windows Mobile-based smart phone capable of receiving and displaying DVB-H digital TV broadcasts. This handset, made by Taiwan's HTC, will hit stores during the second half of 2006, the company announced yesterday.

The 10.3 x 5.5 x 1.5cm handset is based on a 200MHz Texas Instruments OMAP 850 processor, 128 MB of Flash ROM, 64MB of SDRAM and a Micro SD slot for more. It has a 2.2in, 240 x 320, 65,536-color display and a 1.3 megapixel camera. It has a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE radio and Bluetooth 1.2. It weighs 120g.

The Nvidia GoForce 5500 graphics chip processes the digital TV data picked up by the handset's antenna. The phone also sports an on-board electronic program guide (EPG). There's no word on whether or not shows can be recorded and saved to memory.

The Modeo phone has a 1150mAh battery which will hold power for three hours of TV viewing time or four hours of talk time. Stand-by mode lasts for six days.

Will everywhere be able to receive these TV broadcasts? Well, Modeo is planning on availability in "select" US cities this year, with a broad expansion rollout in 2007. So, just hope you are one of the "select".