How many portable gadgets do you own that need charging on a regular basis? A typical user may have a smartphone, a tablet, an e-reader, and a digital media player. Most will have fewer than those four core types of device.

I doubt anyone has 16 devices to charge, but if you do, there’s now a solution for charging them all over USB at the same time. It’s called the PowerPad 16, which has been created by Datamation Systems Inc.

Of course, the PowerPad 16 isn’t a charging solution aimed at the home user, but it could make your life easier when out in public. We take our devices with us to school, college, conferences, and on holiday. They need charging on a regular basis, which means searching out a power point, and hoping someone else hasn’t got there first.

With the PowerPad 16, the stress of finding a place to charge should disappear. I’m hoping airports and conference centers (CES, E3?) at the very least decide to invest in a few and setup charging points offering 16, 32, or 48 ports. As the unit is quite small (6.75 x 3.75 x 2.2-inches) it should be easy to mount them next to existing power points, plus the four screw holes as standard on the casing make wall-mounting simple.

If you can’t spot the PowerPad 16 by sight, you may be able to hear it whirring away. That bulky section at one end of the charger is actually a large fan helping to keep the Cambrionix USB charging board inside cool. You can imagine this thing is going to get quite hot with 16 devices drawing power.

One detail we don’t yet know is how much the PowerPad 16 costs. As it’s a commercial device, I suspect it won’t be cheap.

Read more at Datamation Systems Inc, via Engadget

Remember the Simpson’s episode with the monkey’s paw? Every time the wizened old shopkeeper tells Homer something good that it does, he immediately counters with something bad. Meet the BlackBerry PlayBook 3G+, which was recently leaked: it’s the tablet equivalent of that paw.

Let’s start with the good. The PlayBook 3G+ has a dual-core TI OMAP 4460 processor that’s clocked 50% higher than the original 4430. That’s great. It also features HSPA+ and NFC support — both nice things to add. Base storage is 32GB as opposed to 16GB on the Wi-Fi only PlayBook–another plus.

Now let’s move on to the unchanged, of which there’s plenty. The capacitive display is still a 7-inch 1024×600 pixel unit. There’s still 1GB of RAM inside. The rear-facing 5MP and front-facing 3MP cameras remain intact, as do 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 EDR. The PlayBook 3G+ also weighs in at 425 grams just like its predecssor, and it’s still 10mm thick.

And now for the bad: despite tacking on an NFC sensor, HSPA+ support, and a 50% faster chip, the PlayBook 3G+ only ships with a 4800mAh battery. That’s down more than 10% from the 5300mAh unit in the original. Hopefully, that means that the 4460 is a much more efficient SOC or that RIM has some seriously sweet power saving code getting ready to drop in PlayBook OS 2 when it arrives next month. I’m not so optimistic. If there’s one complaint I have about my heavily discounted PlayBook, it’s the middling battery life.

If you’re a RIM fan and you were hoping they’d knock the ball out of the park with the next PlayBook, it looks like you’ll have to content yourself with an incremental bump and mobile connectivity. That said, no one knows exactly what PlayBook OS 2 is going to look like or how it’s going to perform yet, so maybe RIM’s waiting to deliver the secret sauce that will make the PlayBook 3G+ shine.

Read more at Liliputing

Apple has just posted record growth and earnings, making it the most valuable company in the world. It also means Apple made a profit of around $400,000 per employee during 2011. Tim Cook has therefore decided to reward all of Apple’s staff with a huge increase in the discounts they can claim on Apple products.

At the moment, Apple employees enjoy a 25% discount. From June that changes, with a $500 discount being offered on a Mac purchase, and a $250 discount on iPads. So if you buy the base model MacBook Air it will cost $499, MacBook Pro $699, iMac $699, and Mac Pro $1999. The iPad 2 will cost just $249 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model.

The one product in the Mac range the $500 discount doesn’t apply to is the Mac mini, which would be an absolute steal at $99. Even Apple couldn’t stomach thousands of $99 minis being picked up by its staff, though.

There are a couple of other rules regarding these new discounts. First of all, you have to be employed by Apple for 90 days before the discounts become available. Employees also need to make sure they get exactly what they want as the discount can only be used once every three years.

There’s going to be more than a few people around with friends or relatives who work for Apple. But the discount is too good to pass up so I doubt many employees will be offering it on to people they know.

Three years is a nice limit too, as that’s typically the period PC hardware provides more than adequate performance. However, with an iPad being releasing typically once a year, I doubt many will hold on to their cheap iPad 2 from 2012 to get a cheap iPad 5/6 in 2015.

More at 9to5Mac, via Business Insider