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Continue reading ASUS Eee Tablet: a notepad with impressive 2450 dpi touchscreen sensitivity (updated)

ASUS Eee Tablet: a notepad with impressive 2450 dpi touchscreen sensitivity (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 May 2010 03:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After seven years of development, the Xbox Media Center team says they’ll no longer support the console that gave the project its name. We can’t blame ’em: the writing’s been on the wall for years now, and 733MHz will only carry you so far. If you can’t live without your chunky horizontal monolith, don’t despair — you’ll still find lingering threads of code being woven at our more coverage link, and you can always lend a hand yourself if updates aren’t as quick as you’d like. Don’t let that keep you from pouring out your sorrows in comments, though. We’re sure Boxee, Media Portal and Plex already have a tear in their eye.

[Thanks, bgjz]

XBMC bids farewell to its progenitor: the original Xbox originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 May 2010 03:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oddly MSI didn’t officially talk about its Android-powered WindPad 110 during the press conference, but it definitely exists. The 10-inch slate runs Android 2.1 and is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor. It’s got a different design to the WindPad 100, but retains the same 10-inch capacitive touchscreen and will have a USB port and video-out capability. While the tablet runs just stock Android, we’re definitely digging the curved form factor and the ability to swap out the back cover for a more “stylish” option. We heard very conflicting things about the availability of the tablet — one product manager told us that the company hasn’t decided if it will bring it to market, while another told us that they plan to sell it for $399 by the end of the year. Hopefully we’ll clear that up soon, but we’ve got some hands-on pictures below, along with a video after the break.

Continue reading MSI WindPad 110: a 10-inch Tegra 2-powered Android tablet

MSI WindPad 110: a 10-inch Tegra 2-powered Android tablet originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 May 2010 01:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The show floor is still under construction, but when Computex 2010 opens its doors tomorrow in Taipei, Taiwan, expect to see a parade of netbooks, 3D displays, and lot of would-be competitors to the Apple iPad. 

One of the key trends at Computex this year is expected to be tablet computers designed to go head to head with the iPad. Last week, Acer showed off an Android-based tablet at its annual sales conference in Beijing, and that device will probably make an appearance in here in Taipei as well. What’s more, both Asus and MSI are expected to debut Windows 7-based tablets at the show. Dell and Sony also plan to launch tablets this year, although they probably won’t make the show floor.

Granted, the tablet market has been downright dormant for years, but the iPad has given the segment a big boost; and vendors here at Computex sense an opportunity. Although tablets are still a small part of the overall computer industry, they could grow fast. According to ABI Research new-generation tablet PCs will reach 4 million units this year and could swell to 58 million by 2015.

This is the 30th anniversary of Computex, Asia’s largest technology trade show. According to the Computex organizers, there will be more than 1,700 manufacturers on the show floor, filling more than 4,600 booths.

The show extends across the city of Taipei, from the Taipei’s World Trade Center and Nangang Exhibition Hall. The show opens officially tomorrow, June 1st, and runs through June 5th.

Take a look at our Computex 2010 slideshow at PCMag.com.

Hitachi-LG outed most of the major details for its forthcoming HyDrive last week, but the company just officially took the wraps off the world’s first SSD-equipped laptop optical drive. Frankly, it’s sort of astounding it took this long for such an obvious idea to come to fruition, but now that we’re here, we fully expect other outfits to follow suit. Put simply, the HyDrive is a standard form factor optical drive (DVD burner or Blu-ray will be available), but there’s a 32GB or 64GB SSD (not just a strip of NAND, we’re told) tucked below. When this gets stuffed within a laptop, you’re immediately able to access an optical drive, an SSD (for your operating system and critical launch applications) and a spacious HDD for storing music, media, etc. Previously, this type of three-drive arrangement was only available in beastly Clevo‘s and the like, but this solution is obviously tailor made for even ODD-equipped ultraportables. Another plus to the HyDrive is the integrated Defect Management technology, which essentially caches information from scratched discs (DVDs, namely) in order to play the content back sans jitters.

More after the break…

Continue reading Hitachi-LG goes official with HyDrive: SSD-equipped optical drives landing in August

Hitachi-LG goes official with HyDrive: SSD-equipped optical drives landing in August originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 May 2010 00:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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