This week I stopped by to check out the ASUS N82JQ laptop. After the full review went up, I thought I’d come in with the style report.

The N82JQ (what is up with these names? They should do like phones carriers and call them something cool) is a very nice looking notebook. I was even more impressed when I was told it could be used for gaming.

The laptop has a nice copper-ish color with a very interesting pattern to it on the top lid and under the hood on the touchpad and above the keyboard — you have to get really close to see it in detail. I do like that ASUS has decided at least in part to continue the design from the cover to the inside. I often hate that, when your laptop is closed it looks great, but when opened it turns boring.

Besides the style on the cover, deck and touchpad, it’s a pretty standard affair. Nothing special about the keyboard, though I like the feel of it.

The ASUS N82JQ makes for a nice looking mainstream laptop, and for an even cooler gaming machine. If you are a hardcore gamer, this might not be your first choice, though it would be good as a nice secondary laptop. If you are a casual gamer I would definitely check this out.

Think about it this way: if you’re rich and own multiple cars, this may not be your everyday car, but the N82JQ is a nice looking weekend car or for when you’re in the mood to style and profile.

ASUS N82JQ G Style Rating: Fashion Forward

Jason Anderson is a self-proclaimed gadget head and publisher of G Style Magazine where he covers all things “fashionably technical.” He contributes a weekly post on laptop and gadget panache. The views and opinions Jason expresses are his own and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

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The Toughbook of USB drives is here. LaCie’s new XtremKey USB drive has been advertised as “the most adventurous USB drive,” having undergone U.S. Military Grade Testing. The promotional video that LaCie released a few days ago shows a XtremKey that survived getting run over by a truck, thrown in an oven, and even encased in a block of ice. Not only is this USB key apparently neigh-indestructible, it also boasts 4GB of online storage (in addition to the 16 Gigs on the drive) and fast read/write speeds. We ran the XtremKey through its paces to see if it’s really what it’s cracked up to be.

The first thing that struck us about the ExtremKey was its unusual design, created by French sculptor Constance Guisset. The postmodern appearance is certainly unique, though we don’t tend to use flash drives for fashion statements.

LaCie claims the XtremKey reaches read speeds of up to 40MBps and write speeds of up to 30 MBps. In our tests, the read speeds were quite good, averaging about 29.61 MBps when transferring a 5GB folder of mixed media and a 1.66GB video. However, when we did the same test for write speeds, the video transferred at 19.1 MBps and the 5GB file took considerably longer, moving at only 11.8 MBps. While this speed is by no means slow, it’s considerably less than the blazing fast top speed that LaCie is advertising.

Of course, the standout feature of the XtremKey is its durability, so we ran some tests of our own to see how it fared. Our first test was dropping the device multiple times from various distances. As expected, it survived without even one scratch or ding on its casing. The second test involved submerging the device in a cup of water and then putting it in a freezer for eight hours. When we took the cup out, the key was fully covered in ice. Once the ice melted, we plugged the XtremKey into a notebook and it still worked. We then put it in the office toaster to see how it could handle extreme heat. Once again, the XtremKey survived the harrowing ordeal. After our tests, we’re confident that the XtremKey can endure just about any scenario you can throw at it.

The 16GB model we tested also came with a code for 4GB of online space on Wuala, LaCie’s cloud storage service. Wuala runs in a Java applet that can be started in-browser without having to install the program directly to the The storage device that holds your OS, programs, and data.
Learn Morehard drive. The interface is designed to closely resemble Windows Explorer, and as a result we found it easy to navigate. It is also worth noting that the cloud storage is completely separate from the data on the actual XtremKey, so you can organize both types of storage however you want.

Overall, the LaCie XtremKey greatly impressed us. Not only did we prove that it can indeed persevere in a variety of extreme conditions, but the drive speeds are solid and the bonus cloud storage adds even more convenience. The XtremKey starts at $49.99 for 8GB (with 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions available) and can be purchased fromВ  LaCie.com.

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Beyond artificial intelligence is artificial life, and researchers have found a new way to create it. In a landmark study, U.S. scientists recently developed the first living cell controlled exclusively by synthetic DNA. Eventually this accomplishment may result in man-made bacteria, which could be used to design new fuels and pharmaceutical drugs. And later, of course, cyborgs.

Craig Venter, PhD, of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Maryland and California, and his team of researchers created this first “synthetic cell” by copying an existing bacterial genome and then synthesizing its genetic code to construct a chemical copy. So, in fact, only the cell’s genome can actually be considered synthetic. Once this man-made “software” was transplanted into a recipient cell, the new bacteria replicated more than one billion times, creating copies that contained and were controlled by the synthetic DNA.

If researchers can manipulate these cells properly, Dr. Venter envisions viable renewable fuels and vaccines for various diseases. He also hopes to build bacteria that can absorb carbon dioxide, perhaps reversing some of the damage we’ve done to the environment.

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