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Race simulators like rFactor or iRacing offer the kind of gaming experience only available this side of a six-point harness, particularly when combined with a wheel like Logitech’s G27 , but sometimes it’s a little difficult to get into the game when perched on an office chair. The 4DOF racing simulator from Motion-Sim will provides the missing link with a somewhat dangerous looking combination of pistons and articulating arms. It’s been around for a few months but we’re just now getting a chance to check out the thing in motion — pitch, roll, yaw, and heave to be specific, with a harness of its own to keep the latter of those forces from sending you across the…

Oops. Over the weekend, it seems as if 300 or so unlucky individuals were shipped a counterfeit processor from the normally reliable warehouses at NewEgg , and Hard|OCP has the images (and video) to prove it. Vincent Waller couldn’t have possibly been more eager to receive the Core i7-920 that he had ordered, but upon unboxing it, he realized that he had received a well-disguised fake. After a fair bit of digging, it seems as if one of NewEgg’s “long time partners” (D&H Distributing) got ahold of 300 fakes in a batch of 2,000, though not everyone’s buying the “it was an honest mistake” line — especially when you consider that said company has already issued cease-and-desist letters to the sites who published the news. At any rate, NewEgg has already …

Point : As my fellow Jalopnik readers would agree, the thought of an au-to-MO-bile running on some coffee beans is equally laughable and insulting. Counterpoint : As my fellow coffee drinkers would agree, this is an utter disgrace to our holy bean. Countercounterpoint : Carpuccino? Really? A while ago we read that coffee-based biofuels were feasible. Knowing the internet as we do, we figured it was only a matter of time before somebody took that novel possibility and turned it into an absurd reality. We were right! The Carpuccino, a 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco modified to run on ground coffee, will drive 210 miles between Manchester and London in the coming weeks. The trip will require over 150 pounds of coffee, with the car …

Smartphone in your back pocket? Cracked screen when you flop down on a wooden barstool. Front pocket? You’re asking for nasty scratches should you throw some keys in there. The fix, apparently, are wtfJeans, denim designed for gadget lovers. They sport micro-fiber pockets to protect those screens, a hidden memory stick pocket to keep your infos semi-secure, and even extra padding and protection in special places for male wearers. Granted, the styling is a bit… controversial, perhaps even Kris Kross inspired, but we’re digging the look — and the website, which encourages you to “wear them FTW” and offers special European beta pricing of €59 ($80) for the first 100 pairs. After that only…

Bewildering. We’re pretty sure that’s the only way to describe our adventure at Smartbook’s CeBIT booth. First off, let us just clear up that there are absolutely no smartbooks on display — don’t forget that this is the company that’s going after Qualcomm’s jugular for using the term smartbook in the first place. Now that that’s out of the way, the German outfit introduced two new 11.6-inch laptops at the show, both which are clearly a rip on Apple and Sony laptops. What’s confusing there? Well, the fact that they are actually nice. First off is the Atom N280-powered Razor that’s clad in a brushed aluminum that feels impeccably similar to the unibody MacBook. Sure, it will run like a last-generation…

Fujitsu’s LifeBook UH900 started shipping to Americans just over a fortnight ago, and now one has landed into the capable hands of Pocketables . Boasting a 2GHz Atom CPU and some of the most unsightly adapters we’ve ever seen, this flip-open handheld — which just looks too lovely to be saddled with the “UMPC” moniker — strangely stirs something within our heart. It’s one of those “I know I don’t need it, but I just have to have it” things. Don’t agree? Hit the source link, scroll all the way down, think about the upcoming weekend, and then see how you feel. Oh, and feel free to check out those size comparisons if you need extra encouragement in the “ooh” and “aah” department. Fujitsu’s LifeBook…

We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Cam, who don’t need no stinkin’ app store for his next digital audio player. If you’re looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com . “I’m getting quite sick of my Sansa Clip, with it deciding when and when it doesn’t want to work. I’m looking for a new PMP. The only requirement is that it has at least 4GB of storage, and supports FLAC files. Expandable memory would be cool too.” We appreciate the brevity, Cam. In your spirit…

Well, it looks like MSI isn’t the only company churning out new systems in advance of CeBIT — LG has now also let out word of three new laptops and netbooks ahead of the big show. Leading the pack is the stylish, CULV-based T280 ultralight pictured above, which packs an 11.6-inch display, a choice of a 1.3GHz Pentium dual-core or Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, a 320GB or 500GB hard drive, and a price ranging from $990 to $1,094. Joining it are the X140 and X200 netbooks, the latter of which actually looks to be identical to the X20 model we spotted at in the …

What, it wouldn’t be a camera convention without Nikon (and everyone else, for that matter) showing off a basket of new point-and-shoots. We knew what the company was bringing — selections from its “Style” and “Life” series , as well as the P100 superzoom we covered earlier this week — and now we’ve gotten our hands on the L22, S4000, L110, and S8000. There isn’t much to say, frankly — a collection of pocket shooters of various feature sets and various price ranges to cater to various demographics and psychographics. Still, we know you need to get that “fix” when it comes…

About a week after we ran an update on the Alienware M17x stuttering audio problem, Dell’s community manager John B. has written in to let us know that the company has posted a fix. It entails using a particular BIOS revision, dropping to the Windows native mass storage driver, and installing the latest Alienware wireless card driver, all of which are available for download at the source link below. In Dell’s testing this has removed the latency spikes that have caused the rather undesirable audio st-st-stuttering issues, but many commenters over at Direct2Dell aren’t so sure, indicating that this targeted fix is actually a miss and that things …