Here’s something that has some real innovation involved – a monitor that runs off USB power that lets you hook up to any Windows laptop as a second screen.

Toshiba’s new 14-incher, simply named USB Mobile Monitor, lets you fire up an additional screen, say, to show off your presentations to clients or to simply use as a second screen at home to complement your laptop’s.

Including the cover and USB cable, it weighs just 1.27kg – lighter than most laptops. Another plus: it does not require a wall power supply. Okay, it supports a resolution of only 1,366 x 768, but that’s about what you get on many 14-inch laptops anyway.

If you like, there’s also an optional AC power adapter that lets you turn up the brightness up to its max of 220 nits (cd/m2). Unfortunately, Toshiba doesn’t say how bright it is when it’s on USB power, so we can’t really compare.

In Singapore, the USB monitor is going for S$259 at the Toshiba retail stores at Funan Digitalife Mall and Sim Lim Square. I can imagine a lot of mobile warriors would be interested in this.

I’d thought of posting this small roundup of the best of IFA, but have been stuck with work and fighting a flu. Well, better late then never, right?

Tobit Software djukebox
I’ll never really understand why the good folks at German software firm Tobit Software hasn’t sold this wonder app that runs on an iPad to control thousand of songs and albums. Sure, these guys sell a €1700 “solution” called djukebox, which comes with a modded iPad that you can mount on a wall with in-wall power supply. But surely, a separate app – maybe an Android version – will help these guys generate even more publicity and net them extra bucks as well.

iMon for the living room
If you’ve ever built a home theatre PC (HTPC), you’d have heard of iMon, the PC remote/touch-screens made by Korean firm Soundgraph. They’ve come up with a HTPC cum portable tablet-like touchscreen which lets you access all your songs and movies handily. It’s a great concept, especially the album art/Blu-ray disc cover displays, but the ID and UI look pretty rough still. Plus, apps such as Squeeze Commander (Android) and iPeng (iOS) already do a great job letting you control your Squeezebox song libraries with existing smartphones and, very soon, upcoming tablets as well.

Pioneer’s iPhone-controlled Blu-ray players
It had to happen sooner or later. Pioneer showed off some networked Blu-ray players (like its BDP-LX54) and other entertainment devices that will come with an iPhone/iPod Touch app that lets you control them via a home Wi-Fi network. I didn’t manage to test out the the apps at IFA, but it’s interesting to see CE folks integrating well with the most important touch-screen in users’ lives now – their smartphone.

LG 3D monitor
It’s not new, I know. But with big TV screens sporting 3D, you’d half-expect PC monitors to follow suit as well, just like how thin LED PC monitors seem to be the rage now. At an LG demo of its 23-inch W2363D gaming monitor, I put on the accompanying Nvidia 3D glasses and have to say the games look pretty good – without that much crosstalk – in the short time I tried them. The question is whether you’ll get groggy after playing, say, Call of Duty on it for hours.

I was a man on a mission at this PC Show as I was looking to replace my old cranky desktop, which had parts of it dying and failing on me over a period of six months. An old hard disk was the first to go (trashed), followed by a stuttering video card (repaired) and now the DVD drive has totally gone kaput. Can’t blame the old dear; the machine is a cobbled monstrosity of some very old parts mixed in with new ones that has lived quite a rich and long enough life.

So at the show I was looking mostly at desktops and netbooks (tempted to get one even though my old laptop is still perfectly fine — a typical geek itch), when I came across very cool touchscreen PCs at both the HP and Dell booths. I’ve been to the last three IT fairs, and this is a new product I haven’t seen at a fair before.

The touchscreen PCs do exactly what they sound like they’re supposed to do. You can manipulate icons on the desktop by touching the screen, and both offers from the two vendors come bundled with cool software that showcase this touch technology.

If you ask me, the Dell Studio One has the cooler touchscreen interface that mimics what you can do on an Apple iPhone. Resize windows or icons? Put two fingers on the screen, wait for the icon resize cursor to come up, then spread your fingers apart and the resize happens. Let’s say you have lots of applications running and you want to shift the focus from one to another? Again put your fingers on the screen, wait for the scroll icon to come up and as you slide your fingers across the screen, the different processes float in the background as a series of windowed panels. When you release your fingers, the process you focused on is chosen and the application is brought to the foreground. It’s sort of like the tab key under Macs or Ctrl-Alt-Del Task Manager under windows, but the presentation of this function is really cool.

I also think that the bundled software on the Dell Studio One is more interesting, for example the art program for kids that make it easy for them to scribble lines on the screen. You can also do it on the HP TouchSmart, but the Dell one feels more intuitive. But both offers have excellent software like music and video player functionality that shows off the “coolness” aspect of flicking your fingers to scroll through songs/pictures/videos on the machine.

Form factor wise I have to give it to the HP TouchSmart. Both use a wireless keyboard and mouse, and the PC/speakers/screen is integrated into a flat panel. However, the HP Touchsmart is a 22-inch panel whereas the Dell Studio One is 19-inch. Having lived with a 22-inch for the last two years, a smaller screen size is going to be more difficult to adapt to. Also, for a touchscreen, the bigger the screen, the easier it is for fat fingers (like mine) to manipulate icons.

Of course, the price isn’t cheap. There are a variety of bundles, but the HP TouchSmart starts at S$1,999 (trade in a PC and get a rebate of S$200, making the price S$1,799.) all the way to S$3,499 for the highest end version. The Dell Studio One 19 debuts at S$1,599 to S$1,899. Specs to price wise, I feel the Dell deal is better. Both offer Intel Core 2 Duo processors, 4GB DDR RAM, NVDIA GeForce cards, standard hard disk sizes (from 250GB to 1TB), but the Dell offer is cheaper for better specs. The HP one has more freebies (warranty, other software, etc.) bundled in it though.

Additional stuff: memory prices and cheapo Wii accessories

Every IT fair I pass by the memory card booths just to see how prices have fallen. Things don’t seem to have fallen that much except for the high end stuff — e.g. the 16GB microSD card is S$74, compared to about S$84 at the previous IT show.

About market price for original Wii nunchucks + controller, but what caught my eye was the 8-in-1 made-in-China Wii sports pack going at S$14.90.

Just spotted a pretty nice deal over at the Dell website, while I was researching for an article.

Its S2409W 24-inch monitor is going for a nice S$489, making it an attractive deal compared to most other makes out in the market (typically going for S$500 or more).

Note though that, unlike most 24-inchers out there which offer 1920 x 1200, with an aspect ratio of 16:10, this Dell screen sports a resolution of 1920 x 1080 (“Full HD” or 1080p), with an aspect ratio of 16:9.

What’s the diff? It’s actually less pixels for computers users, so it appears to be a worse deal. But for guys playing Blu-ray stuff and watching HDTV broadcasts, 16:9 is the more commonly supported format for their content.

This “wider” screen may make the black bars in DVDs appear smaller at the top and bottom. So it does seem better for movies and TV.

But beware, unlike the “seamless” viewing promised by Dell, it won’t quite be the same experience every time because you can’t cater fully to the different formats that Hollywood shoots its movies in, say 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 (yeah, I know, stupid Hollywood “artists”).

The new 16:9 Dell screen is still a nice try at convergence though. I’m just worried that, as a Dell 2407WFP (16:9) user, PC games will start coming only in 16:9 format and force me to stretch my picture on-screen.