Sorry Mario, but your Wii Wheel just got lapped, backed over and left in the dust. Heck, even the Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel looks toyish propped up next to this. Then again, neither of the previously mentioned accessories will put a $349.99 hole in your bank account, but did you really expect anything else from an officially licensed Porsche product? According to Fanatec, it took the firm seven years to acquire the license, and it required that the wheel be "the best out there." We can't judge the quality from here, but we can tell you it supports wireless USB technology and boasts a trio of force feedback motors, a 6+1 speed H-pattern gear shifter, cordless pedals, an automotive grade leather covering, a key-shaped 1GB flash drive for storing settings and compatibility with Sony's PlayStation 3 and PCs of (almost) all ages. Look at it this way: it's still probably cheaper than two tanks of premium.

Another day, another round of PCs exquisitely built from woods farmed halfway across the globe. On the docket today, however, are a number of particularly drool-worthy rigs from Universal Roaming. The Ryou collection consists of a half dozen models constructed from Japanese Judas trees and accented with lacquer, silver / gold powders and other culturally-inspired designs. Each diminutive unit houses a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo T5500 CPU, up to 2GB of RAM, an 80GB HDD, dual-layer DVD burner, WiFi adapter, 3-in-1 multicard reader and Windows Vista, but there's no telling how much you'll be asked to lay down in exchange for such elegance.

Our latest micro-series, Screen grabs chronicles the uses (and occasional misuses) of real-world gadgets in today's movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with a screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dt com.

Last night's Daily Show discussion on the nation's impending recession prompted John Hodgman (aka PC) to bust out his Uncle Rico-esque time machine to take a peek into our collective economic future. We're still trying to decide whether it's richer in irony that (not unlike Jon Stewart) Hodgman an iPhone, or that he pulled it out and used it upside down Charlie Sheen / Bionic Woman style. Video after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: The Hodg-man emailed -- it wasn't intentional. Apparently he was worried about breaking the antique stock-ticker and was distracted. Although we'd like to think it's because he just used a real life time machine -- for reals. Either way, there you go.

Yeah, the NES PC is old hat, but if you just can't find the time to create one for yourself, why not pay some diligent soul for their hard work rather than living another month without one? Available via eBay, this finely crafted piece of art won't crank through any of the latest PC titles, but it comes with plenty of horsepower (and peripherals) to handle all the emulation you can stand. Granted, Americans will have to fork over additional coinage to have it shipped in from France, but flooring a room full of nerds at your forthcoming holiday bash will most certainly make it worthwhile. Check out the auction along with an in-action video at the read link below.

[Via Technabob]

Asus, currently on a crash-bang roller derby thanks to the massive success of the Eee, has stepped up its game in the desktop arena today with the announcement of the Nova P22. The sleek, white and orange box is in the size class of the Mac Mini, standing at just 2-inches in height, and features a 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo E6320 processor with a 1.06GHz front-side bus, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and what appears to be some sweet media center options. As of right now, the PC is only available in Taiwan, where you'll drop around $1,019 for bragging rights. We can only hope they bring something with this much style to the US, so the Mini vs. Nova P22 flamewar can begin in earnest. The ball is in your court, Asus.

[Via Electronista]

A group of Linux users have spoken out against Asus and their apparent non-compliance with certain aspects of the General Public License attached to Xandros Linux distro that comes with the Eee PC. This flustered controversy centers around Asus modifying a module of the Linux kernel without distributing the source code, something that breaks the rules of the license. Your average Eee PC owner isn't going to give a damn about such a trivial point, so end users can safely ignore this debate. As for whether Asus will step up and do what it should have done from day one, that'll depend on how loud the developers involved make their case. Type harder guys!

[Via Slashdot]

Lenovo, a company which appears to be inching out from under the thumb of parent IBM, today announced two new desktops christened with the ThinkStation moniker aimed at the enterprise market. On the more "conservative" side, the ThinkStation S10 offers either an Intel Core 2 or Core 2 Extreme processor, an NVIDIA graphics chipset, plus "multiple slots, bays and USB ports." Big brother ThinkStation D10 ups the ante on the CPU-side by adding an Intel Quad Core Xeon processor, which should warm your lab nicely. The systems are aimed at users engaged in "graphically and computationally-intensive" tasks, though the workstations also meet Energy Star 4.0 requirements, and contain more than 50-percent recycled plastics content. The new PCs will be available in January, with the S10 starting at $1,199, and the D10 at $1,739.

[Via Reuters]

Asus's Eee PC is clearly making a big splash, and now that units are starting to arrive in homes everywhere the inevitable unboxing photos are starting to arrive. We've already seen the guts of this little lappie, so now it's time to see some lucky punter open their own unit and splay the battery, mini-charger, and driver disks. Nothing particularly surprising here, but if you're waiting for your own unit to arrive or for stock to replenish, we know you won't be able to get enough of these pics.

Gateway is passing around an invite to New York's Digital Life attendees, promising the grand unveiling of... something. The invite is tagged with a cute little "Gateway One" logo, or maybe it's "One Gateway," and all signs are pointing towards a new all-in-one PC with decent aesthetics. Also, breakfast will be served, so you know we're all over it. The press conference will be at 9AM EDT on September 27th.

PC case modders will tear up anything in search of a bit of novelty, especially if it happens to reek of old school. Ancient telephones -- we hear they were called rotary phones, or something -- happen to fulfill the old school criteria, with one modder surrounding his PC in cracked wood, and hooking it up to an old phone. The phone now works with Skype and other VoIP solutions, with the owner presumably waiting in anticipation for all the calls to tell him how awesome / clever he is.

[Via MAKE]

It's that time of year again on Ask Engadget, when unfortunate, impressionable youths get kicked out of nurturing homes into the adult-beverage-soaked halls of higher learning institutions. Of course, the question of the hour is what kind of computer should you guilt your parents into purchasing for you, but Dave's making things particularly hard on himself:

"I'm a Uni student doing IT Security, and I'm looking to replace my now four year old Windows laptop, and am tossing up between getting another Windows PC or getting a MacBook, and just wanted some advice on how it would suit me. Essentially I do some C/C# programming, Web design, presentations, reports and the like, with assignments needing to be in PPT and DOC formats. Could I get some advice on how each one would fare for my purpose, and iWork and Office compare for University use? Any help would be much appreciated!"

It sounds like Dave's got some pretty specific needs, and our gut feeling is that he won't hear the end of it from his peers if he's running any software that isn't governed by an open source license, but what say you peoples? Oh, and don't forget to send your questions and moral conundrums to ask at engadget dawt com, or next week we're going to be featuring a heartfelt plea from Josh to help him decide his favorite color.

Following up on its Olympics-themed laptops, Lenovo has just announced a new series of desktops which will sport a tiny, barely visible Olympics logo in support of the upcoming Bejing games. The 3000-series J200 and J205 desktops both look the same on the outside (drab, gigantic, PC-ish), but pack ever-so-slight differences on the inside. The J200 is an Intel Celeron based model, with 512MB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, and an integrated graphics chipset, while the J205 will feature an AMD CPU and... nope, that's all. The Olympic-lovers will be on sale in August for $399 and $449, respectively.

Alright folks, those of you scrambling to get your palms around the totally green, subscription based Zonbu PC can put away your patience card, as the firm has officially launched the machine and the corresponding service plans to the masses. 'Course, you already know how the court of public opinion feels about it, so it's finally time to pull the trigger (or not) on the variably priced, modestly-spec'd PC. Check it out -- you can snag your very own Linux-based mini PC for just $99 if you're cool with a very awkward two-year agreement.

[Via Electronista]

PC Mag has gotten its hands on the semi-infamous Zonbu desktop -- a Linux based, environmentally friendly, ultra-small, ultra-cheap PC which is being launched this month -- and they've issued the first field report. The system, which we mentioned back in May, is based around a Via chipset and has no internal storage save for 512MB of RAM and a 4GB flash drive used for the OS. The $99 computer is meant to be used in conjunction with a $12.95-a-month service, much like a mobile phone (with a two year commitment and all), and provides 25GB of storage space on Amazon's S3 servers. The reviewer seems impressed with the speed and stability of the computer, OS, and included apps, but underwhelmed with the online storage process (slow, small), and lack of an included optical drive. The critique also covers a "community" version of the Zonbu ($250), which axes the subscription and adds root access to the computer -- which PC Mag seems to feel is a more sellable option for the new company -- although overall they recommend the system to anyone with basic computing requirements. Of course, you could just get an Apple TV for around that price and hack it, but that might not be up your alley, so check the read link for the whole, exciting breakdown.

[Thanks, Corine]

While we're not sure what happened to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's $6.26 million plan to manufacture $350 "Bolivar" PCs with unnamed Chinese manufacturers, it seems as though that project's apparent failure hasn't set ol' Hugs back at all -- CNET is reporting that Venezuela is planning to enter the oddly crowded PCs-for-undeveloped-regions market, alongside such players as Intel and OLPC. Details are pretty light, as you'd expect, but apparently Venezuelan authorities are contacting Asian OEMs about building the machines, which will be funded by oil profits and either heavily subsidized or given away free to people in various Latin American countries. It's a nice idea, but we're wondering why these "authorities" don't just call up any random catalog reseller and place an order -- last we checked, you could spec out a laptop at retail for under $500, so we can't imagine the wholesale revolutionary-discount price would be over $300. And hey, we just might know someone who'll laser-etch Hugo's face on the lids for cheap -- feel free to give us a call, El Presidente.