Just Out 09/05

Tower of Power Boutique PC-maker Velocity Micro's hand-assembled, silver metal-cased custom computers come to life with a cool blue glow when you start them up. Look inside the 17-inch diagonal side panel windows and you'll get an up-close view of wires carefully folded and neatly tied back for the healthy airflow essential for long processor life. But it's not just looks that tell you these go beyond typical, plain-vanilla Windows PCs. Inside is an image-processing powerhouse with AMD's new lightning-fast Athlon 64 FX-57 2.6GHz processor, a built-in 7-in-1 USB 2.0 card reader, two 74GB hard drives that work together for speedy photo editing (along with another 200GB hard drive for storage), and two 16X DVD+/-RW/CD-RW dual-layer-capable optical drives. Warranty? Try three years with one year of 24/7 tech support and on-site service. Top-of-the-line models start for under $4,000. (Velocity Micro, Inc.; www.velocitymicro.com; 800-303-7866)

Hold the phone It's only a matter of time before somebody's cell phone voicemail says, "Sorry I can't take your call, I'm too busy taking pictures with my phone." Which phone will make screening your calls worthwhile? Nokia's N90 is a "smart" phone featuring a rotating 2MP camera and autofocusing Carl Zeiss lens. (Yes, Sony has a lock on Zeiss glass for its digital still cameras, but Nokia beat Sony Ericsson-a separate cell phone company-to the punch by locking in Zeiss optics for its camera phones.) With an estimated street price of $900 (minus rebates), the N90 isn't cheap compared with a standard 2MP digital camera. But it does have some redeeming camera qualities: manual exposure controls, macro-focus capability, and an LED flash with a 5-foot range. Plus it has the ability to capture and transmit images to other phone cams, the Internet, or a local lab for prints. It also records, sends, and lets you edit MPEG-4 movies. You can even video conference with other N90 owners or listen to MP3 audio files via the stereo headphone jack. Try that with a digital still camera. (Nokia; www.nokia.com; 888-256-2098)

Stacked card The memory-card-capacity race is heating up; card makers realize that photographers like having enough gigabytes to photograph everything in sight with capacity to spare. How many images can you pack onto SanDisk's new 8GB Ultra II ($700 street)? Figure around 650 8MP RAW images or 2,000 8MP JPEGs. Rated at 60X, SanDisk Ultra II cards have a top sustained write speed of 9MB/sec and read speed of 10MB/sec depending on the camera or card reader. (SanDisk Corp.; www.sandisk.com; 866-726-3475)