Hasta La Gadget!

AT&T has let us know this morning that the 3G MicroCell site revealed last night is currently supporting a “public trial” in Charlotte, North Carolina alone — and perhaps more importantly, pricing (including that $20 unlimited, we presume) is being considered a part of that trial. Unfortunately, they’ve got “no other announcements to make at this time,” so it’s anyone’s guess when this will wrap up and the rest of the country can get its hands on some “more bars in your places” (to quote the MicroCell’s perky introductory videos). We’ll update you as soon as we know more.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

AT&T: 3G MicroCell and its pricing structure are in ‘public trial,’ Charlotte only for now originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve always heard that life was full of compromises, and evidently Pentax made a few when it decided to build its toughest, most rugged point-and-shoot camera of all time. On paper, the Optio W80 looked mighty promising, but in practice, the all-important image quality was found to fall short. Over at PhotographyBLOG, critics found that the camera could withstand “virtually anything” within reason, and while the 5x optical zoom and HD movie mode were both appreciated, most everything else was at least somewhat disappointing. The anti-shake system was found to simply slow the camera down, and the image quality was hamstrung by excessive noise at all ISO levels — even 100. Feel free to peek the full review down in the read link, but make sure to keep your expectations in check.

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Pentax’s waterproof Optio W80 reviewed: tough as nails, ‘so-so’ image quality originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’ve been loving the pictures and videos we’ve been bringing you of the lusciously slim BL40 Chocolate Touch, but holding your breath since a certain blurry photo a few weeks ago showed a rather different Chocolate Touch, we have some bad news. According to Phone Arena News, a Verizon “focus group” (with a questionable sense of aesthetics) decided that the BL40 was crap, and so the somewhat unfortunate looking and decidedly asymmetrical VX8575 has been blessed for domestic release as “Chocolate Touch.” It looks to be standard fare featurephone stuff, with a 3.2MP camera, WVGA TFT display, and a browser that will support some subset of HTML. No word on if or when the BL40 will also be making an appearance at Verizon stores, but if we’d been pushed to the curb for something this busted we certainly wouldn’t come back — at least not without a very big bouquet accompanied by a sincere apology.

Filed under: Cellphones

Verizon VX8575 Chocolate Touch confirmed to be uglier than that other Chocolate Touch originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Will HD video make your Netbook?

(Credit: Nvidia)

We’re weeks away from the Windows 7 launch, which is bringing along with it a collection of souped-up laptops and Netbooks that have been waiting for Microsoft’s new operating system as their coming-out party.

In particular, this means that Netbooks …

On the morning of September 11th, a small group of Stanford Aeronautics and Astronautics students set up their class project at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center. The gear consisted of a small table, a couple of MacBooks and two battery-powered model airplanes. The goal: fly the autonomous balsawood and foam aircraft as high as possible.

One of the team, Zouhair Mahboubi, launched the first plane, throwing it into the air much like you or I would throw a paper-dart, and it behaved just the same, crashing to the ground a few seconds after launch. The second plane was more successful, and after take-off flew to 2,177 meters, or 7,142 feet, before the team lost contact.

Because the aircraft was autonomous, the flight didn’t end there. The plane went immediately into landing mode and made it safely back to land, and this turned out to be the trip that set an (unofficial) world record for autonomous craft under 5 kilos in weight. A third sortie saw similar altitudes, but before the plane could climb higher it flew too close to the edge of the allotted airspace — this was on NASA’s ground at Edwards Air Force Base, remember.

For the final attempt, the plane was sent soaring from a mile to the north to buy more climbing time before the strengthening winds again took the craft too far south. The plane, named Blue Panther, made it to 2,490 meters, or 8169 feet, but the winds finally won and blew it well off course to the East, where Blue Panther sent itself spiraling to Earth at 78 mph when it engaged “flight termination” mode. The flight was the highest, but because of the crash landing it doesn’t count for the record.

The students had managed to put these planes, very successfully, into the air where they pretty much looked after themselves, and to do it in just a year, from drawing board to sky. More surprisingly, the models cost just $500 each. Not pocket money, but the sort of success-to-cash ratio that is certainly to be attracting the military. Especially as the tests took place in its backyard.

Stanford students claim new altitude record for tiny, autonomous planes. [Stanford News]

Photo credit: Zouhair Mahboubi

See Also:

• The $150 Edge-of-Space Camera: MIT Students Beat NASA On Beer …