Posted 02/11/10 at 03:57:36 PM by Bart Salisbury

Touch screen notebooks: good idea or greasy, smudgy mess? Toshiba’s going to give us another chance to find out, with the release of the Satellite U500-1EX laptop.

The U500-1EX has a 13.3-inch TrueBrite XGA touch screen LCD, with a resolution of 1280 x 800. It’s powered by the Intel Core i3-330M processor, with a clock speed of 2.14GHz, a front side bus speed of 1,066MHz, and a second level cache of 3MB. Standard memory configuration is 4GB of 1,066 MHZ DDR3 RAM, expandable to 8GB. And it comes with a 320GB hard drive and double-layer DVD drive with read/write capabilities.

The 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium is pre-installed. The touch screen operates off of Microsoft's Touch Pack add-on.

The rest of the U500-1EX’s specs are pretty much what you’d expect: an HDMI port, a 5-in-1 media card reader, two USB 2.0 ports, an integrated HD web camera and built-in microphone, 802.11 b/g/N Wi-Fi, fast Ethernet, and Bluetooth. The touchpad allows for multi-touch control. Battery life is estimated at a bit over three hours.

The price of the U500-1EX is £649 (but jumps to £762.58 after VAT is tacked on). That translates to about $1,107. Doesn''t make any difference, really, as, for the moment, the U500-1EX is only available in the United Kingdom.

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Posted 02/07/10 at 03:52:30 PM by Justin Kerr

Think Steve Jobs was cutting you a price break when he unveiled the $499 iPad? Think again. A small OEM based out of Colombia by the name of Haleron Technologies has just released a $149 iLet Mini tablet to cost conscious buyers. It looks like an interesting enough device, but you might want to keep your expectation in check based on the hardware.

The iLet Mini sports a 7-inch resistive LCD touch screen running at a resolution of 800 x 480, and for comparison sake, is slightly worse than your average netbook. Its a funny resolution to spot on an Internet tablet, but starts to make sense when you drill down to discover that a 300 MHZ ARM processor is at the heart of it all. In the memory department it also falls a bit short with only 128MB of DDR2 RAM, and a mere 2GB of NAND flash for storage. SD Flash cards and external hard drives of up to 250 GB are supported, but currently the only OS being offered is Windows CE.

It would be interesting to see how a device like this would compare to the iPad, but the fact that the spec sheet says it running Windows CE, and the screen shots show Windows XP don't give us a warm and fuzzy feeling when it comes to the companies honesty. For hardware enthusiasts its not a total loss mind you. The device offers up a pair of USB 2.0 ports, wired Ethernet, support for external keyboards, and all that wrapped up in the promise of 8-10 hours of battery life. If your waiting for good ole Steve to capitulate on any of those features for the iPad, you're going to be waiting a very long time.

Either way I think it gives steam to the argument that Apple is making a pretty healthy margin on its new tablet. Are you interested at this price?

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Posted 01/14/10 at 11:45:22 AM by Paul Lilly

Boutique system builder iBuyPower this week announced the availability of what the company claims is the planet's first ever multi-touch gaming notebook, the Battalion Touch CZ-10.

"Availability," in this case, means you can pre-order the unit, but you won't have to wait very long. iBuyPower says it will begin shipping the CZ-10 starting on January 22, just over a week from now.

"We believe multi-touch compatibility is the future of mobile gaming," said Darren Su, Vice President of iBuyPower. "We are proud to be the first company to market with a multi-touch gaming notebook and look forward to all the new multi-touch games due out this year."

The customizable Battalion Touch comes standard with an Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 processor, 2GB of DDR3-1333 RAM, ATI Radeon HD 4650 graphics, a 250GB hard drive spinning at 5400RPM (7200RPM available for $11 more), 3X DVD burner, 3-in-1 media card reader, 802.11a/g/n Wi--Fi, a 6-cell battery, and Windows 7 Home Premium. Pricing starts at $999.

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Posted 01/07/10 at 05:00:15 PM by Bart Salisbury

 Innovate or die is a definite theme emerging from this year’s CES, and nowhere is this more apparent than with car navigation systems. In-car satnav is the ultimate uni-tasker, and now that smartphones are capable of doing this, they’re falling out of favor. Pioneer hopes to alter this trend a bit with the introduction of the AVIC-X920BT, a true multi-tasking beast.

The AVIC-X920BT is a double-DIN head unit that bundles together satnav, radio/CD, and iPod connectivity (via USB), voice recognition, and the first implementation of Pandora Internet radio. It has a 6.1-inch WXVGA screen (800 x 600 pixels), 3D graphics acceleration, DVD play-back, built-in Bluetooth, 4 GB of internal memory, an micro-SD card slot, and Pioneer’s proprietary MusicSphere interface. (MusicSphere has an iTunes plug-in for analyzing music libraries and creating specialized playlists based on certain musical attributes.) The AVIC-X920BT is also satellite radio-ready.

The navigation system uses the Tele Atlas with coverage of the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii), and Canada. It contains over 12 million points of interest, and uses an enhanced voice recognition system for input. It also has an ECO Driving feature that makes use of driving status reports when routing, to reduce environmental impact. (Companion PC software, AVIC FEEDS, will provide detailed information on trips, including an analysis of driving habits, which are used to generate suggestions on how to improve fuel efficiency.)

The AVIC-X920BT will be available in April, and will have a suggested retail price of $1,200.

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Posted 11/02/09 at 05:08:13 PM by Bart Salisbury

Bing for Mobile has received a nifty little upgrade from Microsoft. The Bing for Mobile site has been touch-optimized, so it now takes advantage of the touch-screen functionality of many smartphones. The upgrade builds on Windows Mobile 6.5, which makes touch-screen ability part of this smartphone operating system.

Right now it appears that Bing for Mobile, which can be accessed at m.bing.com, will work on a limited number of devices. Justin Jed at the bing community blog reports touch-screen ability is available on the iPhone, T-Mobile G1, VErizon Imagio, Samsung Omnia and the Apple iPhone. It also works with the Zune HD and the iPod Touch. Jed is promising support for new devices “over the next couple months.”

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Posted 10/27/09 at 08:22:53 PM by Jason Barry

MTube’s latest touch screen device isn’t a new mobile phone or netbook. Instead, the Mtube Android MID is intended as a multimedia device for living room entertainment.

It offers a 7.6-inch OLED touch screen, an ARM processor, internet access and wireless streaming to your television. You can send videos and images to your television using touch screen gestures. The details on how the device communicates with your TV are not clear; it’s likely a WIFI receiver will connect your HDMI ports (on the TV) with the MTube. MTube has been in negotiations to integrate a receiver into displays.

It’s not exactly production ready (the demo unit crashed in the video) but it is an interesting use of the Android operating system and could prove to be a clever entertainment device.

Check out the video after the jump.

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Posted 09/14/09 at 11:00:00 PM by Florence Ion

When we last visited the Lenovo Thinkpad T400s, we gave it a relatively good score based on its sleek, black matte chassis, its comfortable ergonomic keyboard and its reliable on-the-go specifications, which included a 128GB SSD. Now, the T400s has had a minor overhaul in hardware (including a touchscreen LCD) and software and we were lucky enough to get some hands-on playtime with the still-in-beta SimpleTap multi-touch software.

Read on for our impressions!

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Posted 08/25/09 at 07:53:39 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Sony today further bolstered its lineup of e-readers by announcing the Sony Reader Daily Edition - first in its stable to feature wireless connectivity (Wi-Fi and 3G). The Reader Daily Edition also features a 7-inch touch screen. In fact, wireless connectivity and a larger screen are the only notable features that separate it from the Reader Touch Edition.

Sony had announced the $299 Reader Touch Edition and $199 Pocket Edition earlier this month. The Daily Edition, which was announced at a launch event at the New York Public Library, will retail for $399 and debut in December.

Steve Haber, president of the Digital Reading Business Division at Sony, also announced that users will be able to borrow ebooks from the local library, with the borrowed books having an expiration period of 21 days. The new version of Sony’s online book store will let users search for libraries that loan electronic versions of their books.

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