Planet CNET: Spooning at 40,000 feet Video
Planet CNET: Spooning at 40,000 feet Video Transcript
[ Music ] ^M00:00:05
>> Hello world, I'm Kara Tsuboi reporting from San Francisco and you're watching Planet CNET. On this orbit we learn about cameras for French espionage, a not-so-bright idea from the U.K., but first let's join the mile-high club about to take off from Australia. ^M00:00:24 [ Sound effects ] ^M00:00:26
>> The downside of living on a giant island at the bottom of the world is that it just takes so long to travel any where. Getting to London or New York requires spending more than 20 hours couped up in an airborne metal tube. Thankfully the in-flight entertainment options have improved since those days of squinting in to the distance at a seating monitor. To check out the tech specs these days, we're at Sydney Airport onboard Singapore Airlines super slick A380. ^M00:00:52 [ Music ] ^M00:00:57
>> If you got a spare 22,000 Australian dollars, you can fly to London and back in one of the twelve suites. Each one has sliding doors and a full size mattress and if you and a companion booked two suites in the middle, you can spoon on a double bed. This one looks suspiciously rumpled. As far as tech specs go there's a high rise 23-inch screen which is great for watching flight information and educational documentaries. If you can't afford a suite then Business Class is hardly slummy then. The seats are the widest you'll find for the price, the LCD is 15.4-inches and a pair of surprisingly decent noise-canceling headphone is thrown into the mix. As you might expect things had down scaled a little bit in cattle class, but there still of the mode cons including a 10.6-inch screen, that's 1280 by 768 pixels. Regardless of how much you paid for your tickets you get On-Demand access to a hundred movies, 180 TV shows and 700 CDs. If none of those take your fancy then plug your own DVD player in. There's office software if you fancy a bit of typing and you can charge your MP3 player using one of the USB ports. So there you have it, Australians now have a much smaller chance of dying of boredom before they reach their destination. I'm Ella Morton for Planet CNET.
>> Doing the math that's 850 bucks an hour in one of those suites on a 20-hour flight. Eight fifty an hour just to be a little spoon. We don't need the fancy jet to get you to London where our Eco Warrior Rory Reid test out a gadget that claims to save you about 14 bucks a year or say the equivalent of one month of your Netflix plan. ^M00:02:44 [ Music ] ^M00:02:46
>> Hi, Rory Reid for CNET UK here. I don't know about the rest of the world, but here in Britain we're experiencing hard times. Our economy is in free fall. Global warming is threatening to wipe out the planet and New Kids on the Block are threatening a comeback. The world needs a savior. That savoir could be the Advent Eco PC. Its makers reckon it uses less power than your average light bulb which is a remarkable claim considering it has an ordinary Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive and full wireless capabilities. Now, obviously I wanna put those claims to the test. So I have my light bulb, which we'll come back to in a minute. My first test is to see how much power this uses while doing absolutely nothing or idling as nerds like to call it. And now according to my trusty energy monitor, it's munching through around 25 watts. If I ask you to do something more strenuous like running a bench mark that figure jumps up to 50 watts. Just to illustrate how much power that is I have an ordinary domestic light bulb here with a demo switch running at 50 watts, which is around the same power used by the Eco PC on a full load. If I bringing that down to show you how much power it uses while idling, that's still enough to burn me. The MSI Wind by comparison is powerful enough to do most things and uses just 11 watts while idling and 17 watts while on the full load which is barely enough to scar me for life. ^M00:04:11 [ Alarm ] ^M00:04:19
>> In other words it's more than twice as efficient. The geeks among you will probably be wondering why Advent chose a Core 2 Duo CPU instead of a power- efficient Atom CPU found in the MSI Wind. I don't know. That leads me to my ultimate question. Is it worth buying? I don't think so. See by Advents own figures, using this machine will only save you around 8 pounds per year, if you use it for four hours everyday. Now according to my calculations, it will take you 75 years before you get your 600 pounds back. Surely, there's a better way to save the planet. I'm Rory Reid for CNET UK.
>> Yeah, fat chance this Eco PC is going to be relief to the end-of-days, doom and glooms settling upon the world. We do appreciate your oh-so scientific testing Rory -- I mean, Eco Warrior. We end with Louise Ghegan in Paris who looks smashing with her post-summer tan. ^M00:05:15 [ Music ] ^M00:05:17
>> Aloha! And welcome to Paris. I know holidays are over and I should be thinking about working and stop feeling nostalgic about my awesome vacation on the beach. But hey, that makes me happy. And anyway, people in the CNET France here don't seem to mind me working in my bathing suits. Wonder why? Anyhow, this is a good opportunity to watch great surfing videos. We have very good kite surfers and wind surfers in France. Those guys totally rock. But to witness their talent they also need cameras that rock and they can't just hold the camera under a curl of a wave, can't they? And that's where Microcam or should I say Microcam steps in. This French company sells miniature cameras designed to film any extreme sports. It's totally waterproof and guarantees high resolution images. So, basically this is the camera, but it doesn't record videos, so you still have to plug it to a regular camera that you would have to put in a waterproof case in your back pack. Okay, I know, this is not a new gadget. But why is Microcam the best in France? Well, apparently most companies will sell you surveillance cameras and you should know the quality is below standard. Cheap materials made in China, not completely waterproof, smaller lens, blah, blah, blah. Okay, let's go back to cute surfers now. Aloha. If you like to see some more take a look at CNET Riders Contest website. I'm Louise Ghegan for CNET France.
>> That's all for this week's episode of planet CNET. Thanks for watching, I'm Kara Tsuboi reporting from CNET San Francisco. We'll see you next week. ^M00:07:08 [ Music ]
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