You have your TV, you have your PC. Ever wish you could just do away with one of them and just watch your shows on your computer? You may want to take a look at this little gadget: the AVerTV Hybrid Volar MAX, a TV tuner stick that allows you to receive TV signals (and FM radio to boot) on your PC. Details and pricing in the full article.

So you have this big classroom presentation thingy due today. Your hands are sweaty, your heart is beating loudly, and worst of all, you're panicking. Thing is, you need to show a couple of important documents on the projector, and there's no scanner in sight. You wince when you check the clock: You only have an hour before D-Day.

In those sticky situations, AverMedia's new USB document camera might prove to be helpful. Labelled as the AVerVision 150, this portable gadget is reported to take not only pictures of documents, but other objects as well, including microscopic images. We're not sure yet of the exact amount of memory this camera carries, but you can supposedly save up to 32 JPEG images in this gadget.

The AVerVision 150 may also double as a webcam and is compatible with both PC and Mac. It is currently available and costs around $599.99 USD.

Continuing the chronicles of our laptop purchasing misadventures, (the first part of this tawdry tale can be read here) comes this next chapter in the saga, complete with a twistier plot and a happy ending (but not really). Alternative titles for this blog post included, "AlienWhere: All Your Cash Are Belong To Us" and,  "AlienWhere: I'm Gonna Git You Sucka!"

For those not in the know, here's the lowdown. We love things that go vroom here at QJ, and so we plunked down some cold hard cash (of the digital variety) in order to secure a sweet, sweet, oh so sexy AlienWare laptop, and not just any laptop, we wanted the monster, the Aurora mALX. I might mention that we were pretty darn chuffed at being Order #1 in the queue as well, we sat down and waited patiently for the June 10th delivery date to arrive. Two weeks after the due date and $4,500 later, and we're still sitting in that chair, ankle deep in a pool of QJ bloggers' collective saliva (seriously, it's a little icky in here).

So we did the only thing any rational geek would do, we ordered another uber laptop, but this time we made sure to steer well away from They Who Shall Not Be Named (Alienware). Buying expensive toys on the interweb can be a risky thing (as we've since found out) but there are tools that can help guide you. A quick search on resellerratings.com turned up a neat site called Xtremenotebooks.com, it helped that they offered "Legendary Prices On Products That Rock," and they had the resellerratings to back up the bold claim, so we took a chance.

Present day: While our Alienware laptop is still stuck in "Phase 3: Oblivion", we're humming along to the sweet sounds of the Nova 988W. Not only did they get this piece of kit to us in just a few days with zero delays, they also fixed a small issue we had with the CD drive and replaced it immediately, with FedEx overnight delivery to boot!

Specs please? Sure thing, here's the rundown, it's got a 19" High Contrast Glossy Wide Angle WSXGA+ LCD, perfect for ogling life size boobies productivity, an AMD Turion™ 64 ML-40 with up to 2048MB Dual Channel DDR PC3200 400MHz RAM,  NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7800 GTX GeForce™ Go DUAL SLI 16X PCI-E with 256MB GDDR3 RAM and an SATA150 7200RPM HDD 8x Dual Layer DVD±R/RW. Oh yeah, it's also got a built in 4-in1 Card Reader, a Digital Web Camera and 5.1 Surround sound with subwoofer, a Built in Mini PCI Wireless 802.11G (54 Mbps)and Bluetooth for high speed net access to the aforementioned boobies productivity and of course a Built-In Avermedia TV Tuner w/Remote Control, so we can watch the boobies productivity on local TV without having to... lean forward... and... push the buttons?

In other words, we're darn happy - thanks for the fantastic service, XtremeNotebooks! So you see some fairy tales have happy endings, and if we ever see the fruits of that missing $4,500, it'll be an even happier ending, but for now it's enough that we can start mopping up that stagnant pool of drool in the office.

Finally, the Mac is starting to get some respect from PC peripheral manufacturers. AverMedia, one of the first companies making Mac-compatible products, announced the upcomng release of drivers that will run its USB TV tuners on Macs. The USB TV tuner, supposedly the smallest model to date, supports analogue and DVB-T transmissions. Although it looks like any other USB based TV tuner, AverMedia said the Apple version will match the Mac's white colour scheme. 

Other AverMedia products displayed at Computex 2006 is the Express Card 34 DVB-T tuner which has the right size to work with the new Apple Mac Books.  A DVB-H model of the same dimension was also on show along with combined analogue and digital Express Card 54 tuners and mini PCI Express card designed for the latest generation of laptops.

The company did not say when the Mac drivers will be available.