New Products

Samsung's HL-S5679W HDTV ($4,199), coming in August, is the first rear-projection set to use LED (light-emitting diode) light sources instead of a conventional lamp. Among the reasons you should care: a 20,000-hour lamp life (more than double typical lamps), a shorter turn-on time (7 seconds), and being able to rattle off one more abbreviation when blabbing about your rig.

Designed for the media professional on the move, Dell's Inspiron e1705 notebook ($2,165) comes with Windows XP Media Center Edition and has a high-performance Intel Core Duo processor to power it. Games and videos will live large on the 17-inch widescreen display, and the top-notch Nvidia graphics card makes sure quick motion won't give you any visual hiccups. No time to boot up?

COOL FACTOR With music controls on the outside of its clamshell exterior, Sony Ericsson's W300 Walkman phone knows your tunes are important to you. The included 256-MB Memory Stick Micro card will hold around 75 MP3 or AAC songs, depending on the bit rate; 1-GB cards are available.

COOL FACTOR While other music portables can claim greater capacity, compactness, or coolness, this digital demon boasts the longest battery life of any MP3 player ever - 150 hours per charge, folks. Next time you decide to skip town for a week, don't even bother bringing the charger with you.

COOL FACTOR It's nice to see other portable media players keeping up with the iPod, and Toshiba's gigabeat S Series has comparable video chops: a crisp 21/2-inch screen with 320 x 240-pixel resolution.

At $1,700, Sony's HDR-HC3 high-def camcorder is just $100 cheaper than the previous model, but it still takes a step forward by being the first HD cam with an HDMI output - the digital video connector most common on new HDTVs.

COOL FACTOR Without a doubt, getting rid of your iPod's headphone cable would be a huge plus. Sure, you may not get as much street cred without the dangling white wires, but think of the freedom you'll have with TEN's naviPlay, which has volume and track-skipping controls right on the earcup.