Hydrogen and electricity dominate the discourse of zero-emission vehicles, and Aston Martin set out to prove the worth of the former on Germany's famed Nurburgring race course. The British automaker completed a lap of the 15-mile Nordschleife circuit last weekend in a race-modified Rapide S model fueled by hydrogen.

The lap was in preparation for next month's 24 Hours of Nurburgring, in which Aston Martin will enter its car in the E1-XP experimental class of the endurance race.

Aston Martin's Hybrid Hydrogen Rapide S uses an idea already extensively explored by BMW: burning hydrogen in an internal … Read more

Piloting the 2013 Dodge Challenger SRT8 392 Special Edition in heavy traffic on a damp road, I began to list all the other cars I would rather be driving at that moment. The Challenger looks good and justifies its retro-muscle-car status with a massive engine, but wouldn't be my first choice for making a quick trip out to the grocery store.

The 392 badges on the fenders make a historical reference to an earlier version of Dodge's Hemi engine and recall a time when we used cubic inches instead of metric liters to measure engine displacement. However, those … Read more

Oft-criticized for its appearance, something about the Nissan Juke appealed to gearheads, enough so that the company created the Juke-R, a high-performance, and costly, version of the compact SUV using the GT-R's engine. For those of us lacking the funds for one of those custom-built rocket sleds, Nissan comes out with the Juke Nismo.

The Juke Nismo was first shown as a concept at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show.

Nismo is Nissan's sport brand, which in the retail market covers performance parts and a version of the 370Z. The introduction of the Juke Nismo should be the first … Read more

In this video released by McLaren Automotive, we see the P1 concept car, originally unveiled at the 2012 Paris Motor Show, undergoing track testing.

The car sports typical camouflage for models under development, somewhat odd considering the earlier reveal of the concept. One key difference between what was seen at Paris and the model in the video is a big wing sitting on the back of the car. The wing approximates the shape of the P1 at the rear, so could possibly be retractable, although its height would argue otherwise.

As of this posting, McLaren had not specified an engine … Read more

LAS VEGAS--D-Link's passion for 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard is both deep and wide.

Apart from the existing DIR-865L and the recently announced DGL-5500, which is the first 802.11ac router that uses a Qualcomm chip to offer StreamBoost technology, D-Link has two more 8021.11ac routers to show off at CES 2013.

They are the AC1750 Dual-Band Gigabit Cloud Router (model DIR-868L), and the AC1200 Dual-Band Gigabit Cloud Router (model DIR-860L). Both use the same Broadcom chip as that used in the DIR-865L. And similar to the DIR-865L, they are both cloud-based routers, allowing users to remotely manage their … Read more

LAS VEGAS--When it comes to network attached storage (NAS), Synology's DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system has been as good as it gets. Well, it's about to get even better.

At CES 2013 today, Synology announced and demonstrated the public beta of DSM 4.2.

This is a major upgrade from DSM 4.1 that brings improvements for both home and business users at no additional cost. Since DSM has a vast amount of features, the list of improvements is accordingly long. However, some of the major new or improved features include the following:

LAS VEGAS--If you are looking to upgrade your existing computer to support 802.11ac, without having to get a new computer entirely, here's something to look forward to.

Trendnet announced today at CES 2013 its first USB 3.0 802.11ac W-Fi adapter, the AC1200 Dual Band Wireless USB 3.0 adapter, model TEW-805UB.

This adapter card supports the dual-stream setup Wi-Fi standard and offers the cap speed of up to 867Mbps, when used with a 802.11ac router. It also works with existing Wireless-N routers and offers up to 300Mbps data rate in this case.

The new adapter … Read more

LAS VEGAS--If you're tired of the router-modem combo device provided by your ISP, here's an alternative.

Netgear today unveiled at CES 2013 the first 802.11ac router in the States that also has a built-in ADSL2+ modem, the Netgear D6200 Wi-Fi DSL Modem Router. This router can be used directly with a DSL service without the need for a separate modem.

Personally, I generally am not a fan of combo devices, especially those provided by your ISP, but mostly because their router portion tends to be inferior to most existing routers on the market. The Netgear D6200 is … Read more

LAS VEGAS--There might be a real solution to your online gaming at home after all, thanks to D-Link.

The networking vendor announced today at CES 2013 the first 802.11ac-based router designed specifically for gamers, which it aptly calls Gaming Router (model DGL-5500). In a way, this is the first major upgrade to the first router of this type, the DGL-4500 GamerLounge, that D-Link released more than four years ago.

And this seems an upgrade that's worth the wait.

Intelligent Internet management The DGL-5500 is the first router on the market to support the new StreamBoost technology that Qualcomm announced just a few days ago. … Read more