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Sony Reader Daily Edition reviewed: unworthy of cost premium or love

Posted by Jeff | Filed under General Babble

For all the fuss made at its launch back in August, Sony’s Reader Daily Edition has all but dropped off the map in terms of interest. Remember, Sony’s response to the Kindle gave us a 7-inch touchscreen device with free AT&T 3G data for a street price of $399. Now we’ve got a proper in-depth review of the thing. On the plus side, the interface is simple and easy to understand right out of the box with nice, oversized icons suitable for your meat digit manipulation. Unfortunately, the Daily Reader was also sluggish. According to Laptop, it was common to suffer a delay of a few seconds after tapping an icon or other interface item. Worse yet, about a third of the time the Daily Reader’s touchscreen display wouldn’t respond to taps or swipes at all. Conversely, page turns responded with a relatively snappy (for E-Ink) one second delay — faster than both the Nook or the Kindle. The EPD display was also a bit “dull” compared to non-touchscreen e-readers like the Kindle and Nook thanks to the additional screen layer that enables touch — a common issue that affects all touch-enabled e-readers, we might add. This resulted in some eye strain in medium to low light. Connectivity also proved a sore spot. AT&T’s network would inexplicably drop out during testing. It was plenty fast, however, when available, capable of delivering new books to the device in just seconds. Performance still lagged both the Kindle and Nook during comparison testing though. Laptop‘s verdict isn’t surprising then, finding the $140 premium you’ll pay for the Daily Reader difficult to justify compared to the EPUB supporting Nook or Kindle 2 with its better design and superior content selection.

It’s worth noting that Laptop did not test the Daily Reader’s library finder services that lets you check out e-books from the local branch for free for a period of up to a month. A shame; as library nerds we think that’s one of the killer features compared to the competition.

Sony Reader Daily Edition reviewed: unworthy of cost premium or love originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read more | Comments (0) | March 3rd, 2010

Kogan announces $200 HD tablet, with networked TVs, Agora handset, and leprechauns to follow

Posted by Jeff | Filed under General Babble

Ah, Ruslan Kogan — we can’t help but want to see this starry-eyed dreamer succeed, even if we still haven’t got our Android handset. According to Australia’s APC, the man’s gunning for the iPad market with an as yet unnamed tablet of his own. The goal? A full HD, ARM 600MHz-powered capacitive touchscreen device with 512MB RAM, 2GB storage, and an SDHC card for under $200 (presumably that’s Australian dollars, meaning about $180 US). Apparently the above prototype runs Windows, Android and Ubuntu, although Windows won’t be an option if — and we do mean if — this thing ever solidifies, due to production costs. As for that display, it’s tipped to be 800 x 480, the sting of which is taken out by the unit’s 1080p HDMI output. You say you’re not in the market for a slate? Kogan’s also said to be working on networked TVs (“probably by the end of the year”) and a Blu-ray player with WiFi and YouTube widgets. As for the aforementioned Agora handset? “[S]oon,” he says. “I can’t give a time frame on that, though. It’ll be as soon as we’re allowed to.” This is one mysterious man indeed. We can’t help but wonder when he’s going to get serious and tackle something big, like perpetual motion.

Update: We just realized that this is none other than SmartQ 7 MID first handled, oh, back in May!

Continue reading Kogan announces $200 HD tablet, with networked TVs, Agora handset, and leprechauns to follow

Kogan announces $200 HD tablet, with networked TVs, Agora handset, and leprechauns to follow originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Corsair’s 128GB Flash Voyager GTR thumb drive takes USB 2.0 to new heights

Posted by Jeff | Filed under General Babble

Who needs USB 3.0 adapters when you’ve got Corsair, right? In a feat of engineering that can only be described as earth-shattering (or supercalifragilistic, if you prefer), said outfit has somehow created a USB 2.0 flash drive that not only beats the competition in head-to-head speed tests, but obliterates it. The 128GB Flash Voyager GTR utilizes a fancy quad-channel architecture in order to deliver read speeds up to 34MB/sec and write speeds up to 28MB/sec, which is around six times faster than some mysterious competitor that the company pit its drive against. There’s no mention of a price or release just yet, but at least you can put off the inevitable leap to SuperSpeed USB for a few more months, right?

Corsair’s 128GB Flash Voyager GTR thumb drive takes USB 2.0 to new heights originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Hot Hardware | source Corsair | Email this | Comments

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Researchers shows off self-contained, 9mm solar power system

Posted by Jeff | Filed under General Babble

Advances in solar power aren’t always the most immediately exciting sort of developments (a more efficient solar panel still looks like a solar panel), but this new solar power system developed at the University of Michigan certainly won’t have any trouble turning a few heads. Not only is it 1,000 times smaller than any comparable commercial counterpart (just 9 cubic millimeters), but its processor, solar cells, and battery are all self-contained, and the researchers say it would be be able to operate “nearly perpetually” if not for the battery eventually giving out after “many years.” What’s more, they say the system could also be adapted to be powered by movement or heat instead of light, which means that it could eventually power medical implants in addition to a whole range of other devices. No word on when that might happen, but the inventors are already busily working to commercialize the device. Extreme close-up after the break.

Continue reading Researchers shows off self-contained, 9mm solar power system

Researchers shows off self-contained, 9mm solar power system originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Red Ferret | source University of Michigan | Email this | Comments

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Averatec outs light as air 10-inch netbook, can move move move any mountain

Posted by Jeff | Filed under General Babble

Averatec‘s just outed its super thin, super light, 10-inch netbook, the N1200. Available in silver or black, it’s a good looking little package which weighs in at just 2.2 pounds. It boasts an Atom N450 CPU, a 160GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM which is expandable up to 2GB, plus a webcam and 802.11n Wi-Fi. You can get this bad little dude with either XP or Windows 7 Starter. The battery life is apparently about 3 hours, though you can upgrade to a better, 6 hour battery. The N1200 starts at $330. The full press release is after the break.

Continue reading Averatec outs light as air 10-inch netbook, can move move move any mountain

Averatec outs light as air 10-inch netbook, can move move move any mountain originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLVIII: shanzhai PSP Phone dampens our excitement for an actual PSP Phone

Posted by Jeff | Filed under General Babble

When one thinks of a PSP Phone, they usually imagine a handset with a number of cool, gamer-centric features, such as some sort of integration with the PlayStation network or — imagine! — the ability to actually play PSP games. What they don’t imagine — correct us if we’re wrong — is some sort of KIRFy cellphone shoved inside what is essentially the shell of a PSP. That said, we do have to give our friends in Shenzhen some props: not only have they beat Sony with this knock-off, but with the way things are going, they might have the PSP Phone market all to themselves in perpetuity. No specifics on this one yet — price, stats, or street date — but you probably weren’t going to buy one anyways. Get a closer look after the break.

Continue reading Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLVIII: shanzhai PSP Phone dampens our excitement for an actual PSP Phone

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLVIII: shanzhai PSP Phone dampens our excitement for an actual PSP Phone originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Unwired View | source M8 Cool | Email this | Comments

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TiVo Premiere hands-on (update: video!)

Posted by Jeff | Filed under General Babble

We’ve gotten our first look at the new TiVo Premiere interface, and it sure is shiny. You sure wouldn’t see that it’s running in Flash at first blush, since the UI is quite responsive and “native” feeling, with live streams of video playing without a hitch. The biggest hint that there’s a big amount of reliance on the internet is the fact that the choked connection here was causing thumbnails and even some UI icons to take a little while to pop in. The rep we spoke with said that TiVo is still considering what elements exactly they’ll be caching.

The new ways to find and promote relevant content are pretty intuitive and helpful. Everything is “connected,” so it’s easy to start from a category like the “Oscars” or an actor like “Jack McBrayer” and end up on the other end of the universe, IMDB style. There’s a certain amount of dumbing down, to be sure, and nothing’s going to beat your laptop for speed or comprehensiveness in bopping around this sort of information. Although, TiVo helps out a bit in this department with the optional QWERTY remote. Unfortunately, while we appreciate the full QWERTY input, the sliding mechanism is utterly cheap and shoddy — we’re assured that it’s a couple revisions away from a final design, and we certainly hope so! The QWERTY buttons themselves are rubbery and not very clicky, but perhaps they’ll helped along as well by this promised revision.

Update: We’ve got video. It can be found after the break, though unfortunately you can’t hear a single thing our helpful guide says because she’s drowned out by the “fist pumping” good times of the party that TiVo’s event devolved into.

Gallery: TiVo Premiere hardware hands-on

Gallery: TiVo Premiere software hands-on

Continue reading TiVo Premiere hands-on (update: video!)

TiVo Premiere hands-on (update: video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BlackBerry slider photos leak out!

Posted by Jeff | Filed under General Babble

You can consider our minds completely and utterly blown tonight, as we’ve just stumbled upon these photos of what appears to be a new BlackBerry device… a vertical slider. The source (BlackBerry Leaks) doesn’t seem to be able to confirm the legitimacy of the photos, but we’re mostly convinced that this is some variation of a RIM device. While BB Leaks speculates on the possibility of this being the Storm 3, Kevin Michaluk over at CrackBerry suggests this might not be a device headed to market, rather an early version which has been scrapped, similar to that Magnum handset that floated onto the internet recently (though Kevin suggests that our friends in Canada may very well have plans for something in this form factor). What we can say with assurance, however, is that this device coupled with those new BIS 3.0 Gmail integration upgrades, that forthcoming RIM WebKit browser, and a rumored new OS would help push things into the territory of that dream smartphone we pleaded for back in 2008. Coincidence? We think not.

BlackBerry slider photos leak out! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source BlackBerry Leaks | Email this | Comments

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MSI and ASUS show off 3D all-in-ones at CeBIT

Posted by Jeff | Filed under General Babble

There’s no escaping that 3D trend, that’s for sure. Both ASUS and MSI are demoing 3D versions of their respective all-in-one PCs here at CeBIT, though both companies say they are just concept models at this point. ASUS’ 3D Eee Top wasn’t up and running, but there was a pair of NVIDIA-branded glasses next to it which hints that they may be exploring putting 3D Vision into its touchscreen system. We had better luck at MSI, where we got to put on a rather large pair of shades and watch some very happy show-goers play Left 4 Dead in 3D. We’re not sure what to make of the 3D in a touchscreen all-in-one thing, but it was pretty cool to just tap the screen to enable some three-dimensional images. Hit the break for a quick video of MSI’s 3D Wind Top.

Gallery: MSI and ASUS 3D all-in-ones at CeBIT