If you watched the Oscars last night (I didn’t because I didn’t know a deal had been struck for Cablevision to bring back ABC), you probably caught Apple’s first ad for the iPad. The commercial is slick and bouncy, showing the $499 tablet off as an eReader, web surfing device, movie player, and e-mail and productivity machine. My favorite part was when the user flicked open a stack of photos with a simple pinch gesture. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Apple highlighted how quickly the iPad turns pages when reading eBooks. (Sorry Kindle and other eInk gadgets.) We also saw someone attempting to type using the onscreen keyboard, and I’ll be interested to see how well the final production model works in our full review.
We’ve already done our first hands-on with the iPad and came away impressed with the design and software–and a little thing called the App Store. On the other hand, we were miffed about certain missing features. Although it certainly matters what the tech press says, marketing plays a huge role in communicating a gadget’s benefits and its target market. For instance, while the over-the-top Droid ad campaign helped make that Android phone a hit, many blame Palm’s Pre campaigns (especially that first New Agey one) for its lackluster sales.
So the question is, now that that you’ve seen the first iPad ad, does it make you want it more or less?
Never having to plug in your battery sounds like a pretty magical thing, doesn’t it? You wake up, get ready for your day and grab your phone without having to worry about bringing a spare, a charger or worry whether you charged it over night. Nokia is trying to make that happen by working on technology that uses kinetic energy to charge a battery.
Your phone moves around in your pocket or purse, in your jacket and in your hand – why not use that energy to generate power to keep your battery chared? There are wristwatches that already use this kind of technology, so it would be great to see it on a gadget we use every single day, several times a day. According to Symbian Freak, Nokia’s U.S. patent involves a frame that holds a phone’s heavier components that moves along a set of rails. At the end of the rails would be piezoelectric crystals which would use the frame’s movement to generate electricy and ultimately charge the battery.
It sound like great technology, but we’re not so sure how we’d feel about a phone with heavy components sliding around inside. If it works perfectly, however, it might be a trade-off we’re willing to take for that extra battery juice.
Neither the beauty of  the Pavilion dv4i’s arresting chassis design nor the dropped price on this 14.1-inch ultraportable will disappoint notebook shoppers looking for a good machine at a good price.
Starting at $799 but on-sale for $609 with a LogicBUY.com coupon,  the dv4i is a majorly mobile machine that weighs just 5 lbs. despite the added heft of an integrated DVD-rewritable drive.
The rest of the base model specs round out as follows: a 2.4GHz Core i3 processor, 2GB of included RAM, 320GB 7200-RPM The storage device that holds your OS, programs, and data. Learn Morehard drive, Intel HD graphics, Wireless-N adapter, a 6-cell battery, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.
In 2009, we reviewed the dv4t, a version of this machine that sold before the release of the performance-boosting Core i3 processor, and we can say for sure that this rig is hiding a few pleasant surprises: namely powerful Altec Lansing speakers, an HDMI port, a 5-in-1 card reader, and impressively responsive multimedia touch controls.
What’s more is that HP is offering more incentives for buyers who like to configure their deliverable wares: shoppers can upgrade to an ATI Mobility Radeon Graphics chips are responsible for processing all images sent to your computer?s display. Learn Moregraphics card for free, and they can save 50% off other upgrades like a 500GB hard drive and a 6- or 12-cell battery.
For a digital coupon worth 5% off the price of all the above, check this notebook deal out at LogicBUY.
Verizon Wireless, whose plan is to have its 4G/LTE network in 50 to 60 markets by the end of 2012, ran trial LTE tests in Boston and Seattle with great success. It’s not a shocker that LTE will be much faster than 3G, but Verizon seems pleased to announce that average speeds were in the neighborhood of 5 to 12 Mbps for downloads and approximately 2 to 5 Mbps uploads. That’s faster than the 4G claims of Clearwire and Sprint, and maybe fast enough to cause some subscribers to drop their home broadband connections altogether.
So what about peak speeds? Hold onto your hats.
Verizon says it saw max speeds of 40 to 50 Mbps on the downlink and upload speeds of 20 to 25 Mbps. Having blazing fast speeds should allow video, VoIP calls, downloads and web browsing to be done without any kind of hiccups.
If accurate, Verizon’s numbers compare very favorably to 4G speeds we’ve seen recently when testing the WiMax network offered by Clear and Sprint in Philadelphia. In our early tests, we saw download speeds of about 3.5 Mbps at best.
Our LTE rollout plan positions Verizon Wireless to be a global leader in 4G LTE deployment. We are on track to deliver an outstanding wireless data experience to customers in 25 to 30 markets covering roughly 100 million people by year’s end
If Verizon stays on schedule, it would be great news for consumers. Let’s just hope that the usual snags and delays of network deployment stay at a minimum.
I’m sensing a pattern here. After Steve Ballmer showed off a mysterious HP tablet during his CES keynote, HP released more details in late January, on the eve of the Apple iPad’s debut. Today, as the world re-watches the first iPad commercial, which aired during last night’s Oscars, HP is again showing off the Slate, this time running Adobe Flash.
In a five-minute promotion video, helmed by Adobe and HP, the Slate is on display, playing videos from sites such as MTV and running AIR apps, such as a New York Times app, complete with crossword puzzles.
While the Flash playback is smooth and useful, making it a not-so-subtle argument against the forthcoming iPad, the onscreen keyboard looks cramped compared to the iPad’s, and doesn’t take advantage of the entire width of the screen. The good news is that HP seems to have been tweaked the Windows 7 ($77.54) UI a bit to include touch-friendly shortcuts to apps.
Intrigued? Check out Adobe and HP’s walk-through video, along with a short HP promo reminiscent of Apple’s ad.
Between the Toshiba Satellite E205, the Dell Studio 15z, and, now, the Sony VAIO S Series, Best Buy has a triumvirate of sleekly designed laptops that you can only buy through the big box retailer, and all of them come with Intel’s Wireless Display technology. WiDi lets you stream content from the PC to a big screen TV using the included Netgear Push2TV adapter. With a 13-inch screen and a chassis that’s a little over an inch thick, the Vaio S is the thinnest and lightest of the bunch, while still offering performance that blows away most other notebooks in its weight class. At $1,049, though, it isn’t exactly cheap for a laptop these days, and it’s the most expensive of Best Buy’s newest exclusives. Are those extra couple hundred dollars worth it? Find out in our full review.
Act now! Get it while supplies last! As we (and others) noted in our review of the Dell Adamo XPS ($1,905.02), the world’s thinnest notebook is no longer available for sale on Dell’s Web site; consumers with deep pockets can only purchase this ultra-thin system on Best Buy and Amazon’s Web sites.
This thin and stylish notebook, which debuted this past fall, was only going to be made in limited numbers, according to a press representative for Dell, which is why the Adamo XPS is slowly fading from the scene.
If you’re still interested in picking up this system, its price has dropped about $100, to $1,905. For that, you get an Intel U9400 processor, a 128GB SSD, 3 hours and 46 minutes of battery life, and a design that’ll make others drool. If you’re more interested in spending your two grand wisely, the Sony Vaio Z ($2,099) offers two SSDs, about three times the performance, and scads more endurance. But, it’s not as thin, and that’s what you’re getting the Adamo XPS for, anyway.
One of the best perks of working in the tech biz is that we get to see, handle and review all kinds of gadgets and devices before they hit the market. Sometimes, we get to do a little something special by giving away some of our favorite gadgets to our readers and fans. With the HTC HD2 just weeks away from hitting the market, we figured it would be a great time to give one away.
Click here for all the details. All you have to do is answer a few of our questions, then cross your fingers!
It’s still not clear when the first tablets, netbooks, or other devices with Pixel Qi displays will start to hit the streets. But Pixel Qi founder Mary Lou Jepsen says that you’ll be able to pick up a DIY kit for installing a Pixel Qi screen in your own device by this summer.
Pixel Qi’s LCD displays combine some of the best elements of a fully saturated color display and a high contrast e-Ink screen. In a nutshell, you can treat the screen as a slightly thicker, more expensive color LCD and never take advantage of the ePaper mode. But you can also turn off the backlight to reduce the screen’s power consumption from 2.5 watts to about 0.5 watts.
And as an added bonus, while the screen looks a bit closer to black and white in this mode (with some faint colors showing), the screen becomes easily readable outdoors. In fact, in ePaper mode, it’s easier to read text in direct sunlight — something which is hardly true for traditional LCD screens.
Pixel Qi has been showing off the new display technology for a while, and typically those demonstrations include Pixel Qi displays retrofitted into off-the-shelf netbooks from companies like Acer and Lenovo. So while there’s no compatibility list yet, it seems like a safe bet that if you have a device with a 10.1 inch display, you’ll be able to use one of these DIY kits to swap out your screen.
There’s no word on pricing yet. Jepsen says the company will be making an announcement prior to the release of the DIY kits.
While there’s a lot of buzz around the upcoming iPad and dozens of other internet slates, tablet PCs have been around for nearly a decade. The difference is that most Windows-based tablets available today feature full sized keyboards and swivels that let you fold the touchscreen down over the keyboard for use in tablet mode. The iPad is a touchscreen-only device with a low power processor. As a result, the iPad will be lighter, get better battery life, and be altogether more portable than most existing tablet PCs.
But what happens when you take Microsoft’s original vision for a tablet PC and shrink it down to netbook size? I’ve reviewed a couple of convertible tablet style netbooks and to be honest, I haven’t been that impressed with the results. But there are a number of new models slated to come out in the next few month, and Sascha at Netbook News got a chance recently to sit down with three of them and give us a good look at the similarities and differences.
The Gigabyte T1000, Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t, and Viliv S10 Blade all have 10 inch touchscreen displays. But the Lenovo has a 1024 x 600 pixel display while the Gigabyte and Viliv models has a 1366 x 768 pixel HD display. The Gigabyte laptop dis a bit larger, and overall more solid looking. But the Lenovo is significantly cheaper.
The Viliv S10, which shows up about 9 and a half minutes into the video below is much slimmer than the other models. But it also uses a different chipset. While the Lenovo and Gigabyte laptops have Intel Atom N450 or N470 processors, the S10 has a lower power Atom Z530 or Z550 processor.
Overall, it looks to me like the Viliv has the best case design of the bunch, but as we learned yesterday, the touchscreen isn’t particularly responsive.
You can check out Sascha’s hands-on video with all three tablets below for a closer look.
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Never having to plug in your battery sounds like a pretty magical thing, doesn’t it? You wake up, get ready for your day and grab your phone without having to worry about bringing a spare, a charger or worry whether you charged it over night. Nokia is trying to make that happen by working on technology that uses kinetic energy to charge a battery.
Verizon Wireless, whose plan is to have its 4G/LTE network in 50 to 60 markets by the end of 2012, ran trial LTE tests in Boston and Seattle with great success. It’s not a shocker that LTE will be much faster than 3G, but Verizon seems pleased to announce that average speeds were in the neighborhood of 5 to 12 Mbps for downloads and approximately 2 to 5 Mbps uploads. That’s faster than the 4G claims of Clearwire and Sprint, and maybe fast enough to cause some subscribers to drop their home broadband connections altogether.
