Treat your friends and loved ones to some great quality audio with these speaker systems this holiday season. These boom boxes will bring out the best in your favourite tunes and Christmas jingles, and are a leg-up over puny laptop speakers that often lack punch and musical detail.

Bowers & Wilkins Zepplin Air

This gorgeous audio dock from audiophile specialist B&W sports a signature design and promises punchy tunes packed with oomph. You can be assured of room-filling sound and strong vocals that will rise above accompanying music, whether you’re listening to jazz crooner Norah Jones or pop rock band Maroon 5. The speaker also supports Apple’s AirPlay technology that lets you play tunes from an iPhone or iPod over a wireless network. A front dock connector is also on hand for folks who wish to hook up their Apple devices directly to the speaker.

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Logitech has recently introduced its M325 wireless mouse with 72 ratchets so you can scroll through more lines of content with a single flick on the scroll wheel.

Each ratchet corresponds to about one line of content, so fewer ratchets means more choppy onscreen motion when you scroll down a page.

The scroll wheel of most computer mice usually have 18 to 24 ratchets, giving you a scrolling experience that isn’t as smooth when compared to that of a laptop’s touch pad. …

Here’s a chance to win HTC’s Desire HD phone, as well as a host of goodies from our regular reader giveaways.

We have a “seeding unit” of the popular Android smartphone from the folks from HTC Singapore to give away to readers of Techgoondu. Essentially, this is a NEW unit with a “white-box” packing that does not come with accessories such as memory cards. But everything is brand new and we have not even powered it on.

We’ve got other good stuff as well, like Lady Gaga earphones, a Jabra Bluetooth headset and Coolermaster V6 CPU coolers as well. More details on how to win here.

If you’ve seen one Bluetooth headset, you’ve seen all Bluetooth headsets. That was what I thought when I stopped using these gadgets early this year, because I had bought a car that came with its own Bluetooth speaker system.

Thus I saw the AliphCom Jawbone Icon, I was not immediately impressed by what it offered under the hood. In fact, the packaging – sleek enough for a piece of costume jewellery – and the earpiece’s shiny surface made me think this was another one of those pretty gadgets with run-of-the-mill technology.

But was I surprised, when I placed the Jawbone Icon in my ear. Hands down, these are the best small Bluetooth earpieces I have used, whether you’re talking about sound quality, comfort or user-friendliness. …

The Huawei E5 wireless mobile broadband modem is a nifty little device that lets you connect to the Internet on the move. If you have a separate data plan just for mobile broadband, simply slot in your SIM card and connect to the E5′s Wi-Fi access point on your laptop or tablet. …

Finally. After a year of hearing lots of buzz at Unconference 2009 and TechFest 2009, mentions on TechCrunch and Gizmodo, and a few stories in Straits Times and Digital Life, home-grown Singapore consumer product iTwin has finally officially been launched.

For those who are not acquainted with iTwin, iTwin is a USB dongle-type device that let’s you share files between two computers anywhere in the world.

It comes as a pair; plug one into one computer and another one in another one, and you can share files between the two no matter the distance between them.

“Think of it as an infinitely long LAN cable connection, except that it’s via a USB device,” said Lux Anantharaman, CEO, at the iTwin blogger launch party a few days ago.

The device, which retails for US$99 (about S$130), was officially launched on the auspicious date of 10th October 2010.

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I’ve been wanting to swap out my old Razer Tarantula keyboard for a while now, seeing how the lettering is all gone, and I sometimes have to second-guess where the right keys are. I finally did that yesterday with a Logitech K350 wireless keyboard.

Now, you may think I’m downgrading from a performance gaming keyboard to just another boring wireless typepad. But for me, it’s more like switching to something that suits what I do now, which is, sadly, 95 per cent typing e-mail and articles and 5 per cent games. …

One of the questions I often get from friends coming up to Hong Kong is if stuff is cheaper here or in Singapore. In many cases, the answer is “not really” or “just a little” – but in the case of the Synology DS210j that I bought for my bro recently, it was a helluva lot cheaper!

At HK$1530 (which is about S$278 at 1S$:5.5HK$), you’d be paying almost 50% more if you bought one from Synology’s dealer in Singapore (Memory World) which has priced it at S$408. Plus according to the Synology forum (post dates back to 2007 though), Synology does provide international warranty.

So why the DS210j? Only the Qnap TS210J II comes close to the DS210j’s transfer rates, but is more expensive. The rest of the 2-bay NAS competition, like the D-Link DNS-323 are generally slower. Oh, and its DLNA compliant too, so fits in with the plan of adding those ‘media extender’ devices to stream video and audio later.

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It’s that time of the year again.

I’m talking about when Digital Life rolls out the Dream PC – one of the favourite stories I get to do each year as a techie. This PC is the fastest, meanest and well, “best-est” machine that we put together using the top-end components that every geek would want to own.

Last year, we had an Asus Rampage II Extreme X58-based mobo with an Intel Core i7-965 and Corsair’s Dominator DDR3 memory modules in a monster rig. This year, though the leap has not been as big as from Core 2 to Core i7 or DDR2 to DDR3, we have some awesome graphics power packed in. And we have a biggie in terms of a new case to stuff all those goodies in. …

Targus has recently introduced a series of peripherals aimed at Mac users who tend to be a picky bunch when it comes to design. The Targus for Mac line includes the Bluetooth Laser Mouse (seen above), Wireless Mouse, USB Hub, Bluetooth Presenter, File Share Cable, Privacy Screen and Chill Mat. Techgoondu laid our hands on a few of these products which should go down well with owners of both new and old Macbooks and Macbook Pros.

Bluetooth Laser Mouse

At first glance, this Bluetooth enabled mouse is shaped somewhat like Apple’s Mighty Mouse which I have been using with my 2-year-old white Macbook. Ergonomically, it feels familiar and comfortable to hold and control mouse movements. The grey edges and base of the mouse is made of material that gives users with a good grip.

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