Hasta La Gadget!

Epson calls its PictureMate Show a 2-in-1 product combining a digital picture frame and a compact photo printer (in that order). Our reviewer, David Stone, and most of the 10 or so people he showed the Show to, saw it as more of a compact photo printer with a large preview screen, as the printer is large enough that few people would be likely to use it as a picture frame as well.

Either way, having a 7-inch LCD with which to display or edit your shots is pretty cool. And the PictureMate Show produces prints of a quality more typical of a professional photo lab or a higher-end, non-dedicated photo printer than a portable photo printer. Better, it does so at a cost per page (25.3 cents) equal to the recent Editors’ Choice PictureMate Charm and lower than any other compact photo printer we’ve looked at. At 41 seconds for a 4-by-6, it’s very fast for its ilk (and once again equal to the Charm). The only real catch is the price. At $299 (direct), it costs twice as much as the Charm. For the Show’s jumbo LCD screen, that may (or may not) be worth it.

A portable freezer would be a wonderful thing for camping trips and days at the beach. Or would it? This portable freezer, designed by Ruben Iglesias, is a concept design for a product nobody needs. Except for ice-cream, we freeze food for long-term storage. So a battery powered freezer, even if it could actually get cold enough to hold food below zero, is pointless, unless the batteries last for weeks at a time.

But let’s say that Ruben’s design was actually a useful contraption. Here’s how it works: It is powered by a pair of batteries that also house LED lamps (for reasons unknown). “The lamps produce the energy for the freezer to work and they send it by magnetic induction.”

Really? What’s wrong with a wire, or a metal contact? After all, there must already be tubes running through the box to carry the refrigerant, right? That should leave mean you could easily route a cable. But no, this is little more than a cooler with a pair of lights in the lid. Where, for example, is the compressor?

We’re all for concept designs, but only if they have a root in reality. Whipping up a nice CAD illustration and saying it is an “Ecofreezer” doesn’t cut it. It’s like drawing a couple of circles and a square and saying I have made a car.

Still, as a beer cooler it certainly looks nice. And those LED lamps would be great for all-night beach parties.

Ecofreezer [Rubcn via Yanko]

Everybody’s talking about tablets, especially those single-pane capacitive touchscreen ones more specifically known as “slates.” The iPad is the biggest newsmaker, but there are lots headed our way (most with built-in webcams). Here’s how they measure up, spec-wise:

Updated: We’ve added Lenovo IdeaPad U1 and Archos 9 Windows 7 edition—see below for more details.

Click on the image to view it larger

As you can see, they have different strengths and weaknesses, some of which will become more clear in the coming months as we learn more about each tablet. (That Dell Mini 5 is especially inscrutable right now.)

The iPad has the most storage, cheap 3G, the time-tested iPhone OS and its mountain of apps, and a serious amount of Apple marketing juice behind it. But it’s also famously lacking features common to the other tablets, such as webcam and multitasking (only first party apps like music and email can multitask). The Notion Ink Adam is perhaps the most interesting of the bunch, with its dual-function transflective screen from Pixel Qi: It can be either a normal LCD or, with the flick of a switch, an easy-on-the-eyes reflective LCD that resembles e-ink. Its hardware is also surprisingly impressive—but it remains to be seen if Android is really the right OS for a 10-inch tablet.

The Dell Mini 5 and forthcoming Android edition of the Archos 7 tablet are two of a kind, almost oversized smartphones in their feature sets. Is an extra two or three inches of screen real estate worth the consequent decrease in pocketability? Perhaps not. And finally, there’s the maligned JooJoo, formerly the CrunchPad, a bit of an oddball as the only web-only device in the bunch. It doesn’t really have apps, can’t multitask, and pretty much confines you to an albeit fancy browser, sort of like Chrome OS will. The JooJoo is also the only tablet here to have no demonstrated way to read ebooks.

Update: The two new additions in v.2 of this chart, the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 and Archos 9, are both unusual. The Windows 7-powered Archos 9 has been available since September, is the only slate here that lacks multitouch, and is the only one with a HDD instead of solid state memory of some kind. It’s more related to the older tablets, but there’s no keyboard, just a 9-inch touchscreen. It doesn’t even have specific apps like the HP Slate‘s TouchSmart, it’s just a Windows computer.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U1 is even weirder, in that it’s actually two computers—the specs listed in the chart are for the tablet detached, but when it’s attached to its base, it switches both hardware and software. In its attached form, it’s a Windows 7 laptop with a full keyboard and trackpad, Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of memory, eSATA, VGA- and HDMI-out, and all the other amenities you’d expect from a modern thin-and-light. We just have see what it’s like when it ships in June.

Data Sources:
Apple iPad: [Gizmodo]
HP Slate: [Gizmodo, GDGT; Tipster]
Fusion Garage JooJoo: [Gizmodo]
Notion Ink Adam: [Slashgear]
Dell Mini 5: [Gizmodo, Gizmodo]
Archos 7 Android: [DanceWithShadows, Gizmodo]
Lenovo IdeaPad U1: [Lenovo, Gizmodo, Gizmodo]
Archos 9: [UMPCPortal, Archos]

A quick word about “slates” vs. “tablets”: These are tablets, and it’s a word we prefer. The sad fact is, it’s overused. There’s no way to say “tablet” without including every godawful stylus-based convertible laptop built since 2002. (Thank you, Bill Gates!) And even the new touchscreen tablets come in single-pane and keyboard-equipped laptop styles. So “slate,” good or bad, is the more apt term.

Above you see two iPads, pictures of which are grabbed direct from Apple’s own pages. Can you spot the difference? Of course you can. The one on the right is the Wi-Fi-only iPad. The one on the left has 3G, and a plastic strip to let the radio-waves in and out. It’s the very opposite of a tin-foil hat.

Owners of the iPhone 3G and newer may not be familiar with this escape hatch for radiation — the entire back of your cellphone is a spectrum-transparent plastic. The original iPhone, and all iPod Touches, sport this strip. What is a surprise is that the Wi-Fi-only iPad doesn’t have this plastic part. Presumably the Wi-Fi needs to get in somewhere.

Apart from its core functionality, this strip serves one other purpose: a badge. If you are nerdy trainspotters like us, you will enjoy identifying exact models of gadgets from afar. This plastic marker will only make that easier.

iPad Gallery [Apple]

Cosmetic Differences in iPad 3G vs iPad Wi-Fi [MacRumors]

Monopoly is about to get a makeover. The 75 year old game will be relaunched with a circular board, and no cash. Other than the lack of corners and currency, the game remains unchanged, which should mean that the inevitably marathon sessions will be just as boring as ever.

Apparently, when the game was first designed by fun-haters all those years ago, one of the original concepts was circular. We like this new, more compact version, and the modern design is a lot cleaner.

But what about the money? Spoil-sports at Hasbro have taken the only bit of fun from the game: stealing money from the bank. Each player now has a credit-card, which is slotted into a computerized console in the center of the board. Or should that read “bored”? This stops you sneaking cash from your brother’s pile when he is distracted by your cunning dice-tossed-accidentally-under-the-sofa move.

New, circular Monopoly will be available as an insomnia cure later this year.

Monopoly goes circular for 75th Anniversary, does away with cash [Pocket Lint]

Photo: Pocket Lint