Hasta La Gadget!

This week at Computex, ASUS has revealed the MeMo Pad HD 7, a direct competitor for the Google Nexus 7, both of them working with a 7-inch display and both of them made by the same company. Though it may seem strange at first for ASUS to create a tablet that’s so extremely similar to the machine they’ve got in their deal with Google, the different bits and pieces offered with this new machine may make all the difference. And it all starts with color choices.

With the ASUS MeMo Pad HD 7, users will get the choice of several different color back panels – yellow, pink, gray, and white are included in this initial release. The Nexus 7 comes in black – or white, if you’ve got the limited edition Google I/O 2012 iteration. If you put color aside, this machine looks so similar to the Nexus 7 that it is, at first, difficult to tell the two apart.

Both devices have the same display size and resolution, 7-inches and 1280 x 800 pixels strong, that being 221 PPI. Both machines work with Android, but the MeMo Pad HD 7 works with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box with ASUS’ own custom user interface on top.

It’s important to note here that the Nexus 7 benefits from being part of Google’s Nexus program, meaning that it works with Google’s most basic non-skinned version of Android and receives regular updates whenever Google brings new versions of Android to the market. The MeMo Pad HD 7, on the other hand, still works with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and has no such promise of updates on any schedule.

The new ASUS tablet works with an unnamed ARM Cortex-A7 quadcore processor while the Nexus 7 employs the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quadcore processor we know to have support from its manufacturer. While for most common users the brand of the processor has little effect on their end experience, here we know the Tegra 4 to be reliable in its ability to conserve battery life (with 4-PLUS-1 technology, that is), and it has a whole dedicated gaming environment to boast in the NVIDIA TegraZone, as well.

One thing the ASUS MeMo Pad HD 7 has that the Nexus 7 doesn’t is a back-facing camera. While the Nexus 7 famously had its camera axed because ASUS said it wasn’t necessary, the MeMo Pad HD 7 works with a 5 megapixel camera on its back and a 1.2 megapixel camera on its front. The Nexus 7 works with just the front-facing camera on its front for selfies and video chat.

The original release of the Nexus 7 was bafflingly cheap when it was launched, but here in 2013 it appears that the price point is ready to drop once again. While you’ll pay $199 USD for the smallest version of the Nexus 7 (small in 16GB of internal storage, that is), the MeMo Pad HD 7 starts at $129 for an 8GB model. There’s also a $149 model incoming with 16GB internal storage, though there’s still a question of availability.

ASUS hasn’t been clear quite yet on where the MeMo Pad HD 7 will be available, while the ASUS-made Google Nexus 7 is available, and has been available for some time, in both the USA and in international markets. Because of this, the question of which machine is better for your living room is academic: you’ve only got one choice (for now).

ASUS MeMo Pad HD 7 vs Nexus 7: what you gain and what you lose is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Asus unveiled its VivoPC, which is their upcoming Windows 8-based home theater PC.

Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It Original content from Ubergizmo.

On the eve of this year’s Computex international computer and technology fair, ASUS announced two desktop PCs with an optional component that can save both themselves and other gadgets. Both the upcoming G10 and M51 computers will support the ASUS Power Pack, an optional 6,000 mAh external battery pack that doubles as the computers’ UPS.

The Power Pack is the black device jutting out of the G10′s expansion bay in the image above. You can take the entire thing out and use it to charge mobile devices on the go via its 2 USB ports, then dock it back to recharge it. But as I mentioned above, while it’s docked it also pulls double duty as an uninterruptible power supply or a UPS. When power to the G10 or M51 is cut off, the Power Pack can keep those two desktop PCs alive for up to 30 minutes. That’s more than enough to save your files and shut down the PCs. Here’s a video from Engadget’s Zach Honig:

You can read ASUS’ press release to find out a bit more about both PCs. But I bet some of you are already busy thinking of ways to hack an external battery to your PCs.

[via Engadget]

Chalk up a win or two for Intel, with Computex 2013 Day Zero opening to a number of products with Atom chips where usually we’d expect to see ARM silicon. As expected, Intel’s processors found their way into at least one tablet from Samsung, the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1-inch, but the Atom push also got the CPU into a number of ASUS models too. Question is, has Intel managed to squeeze into the Android tablet market too late?

ASUS’ Transformer Book Trio – which is designed to run both Windows 8 and Android on a hybrid slate that can be docked in ultrabook and desktop hubs – paired an Intel mobile chip with a gruntier Core i7, while the MeMo Pad FHD 10 also spurned ARM for Atom.

Chatter of Clover Trail+ spreading had been bubbling for some weeks, but broke in earnest last Friday when multiple sources claimed Samsung was the big-name push behind broadening its chip suppliers. Intel has long been attempt to coerce manufacturers to consider its processors – even going to far as to take the lead on porting Android to x86 – but uncompetitive power consumption, among other things, kept it pretty much out of the game.

That’s all changing with the new Atom architecture, it seems. “In order to meet the demand from our vendor/carrier partners and provide a consistent high-quality experience for customers,” Samsung told us today, “Samsung has sourced components, including chipsets, from trusted partners.” The company confirmed that one such “trusted partner” and component was the processor at the heart of the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1-inch.

“Neither Samsung nor ASUS has leapt to Atom wholeheartedly”

Still, it’s worth noting that neither Samsung nor ASUS has leapt to Cover Trail+ wholeheartedly. The Intel-powered machines share press release space with ARM-based tablets; Samsung’s spec sheet, in fact, doesn’t even mention the underlying architecture or chip supplier, only the speed and the number of cores.

It’s a sign, quite possibly, that the tablet processor market is catching up to where the PC processor market reached a few years back. Most modern chips are “good enough” and so the branding advantage of calling out whether your slate runs on Qualcomm silicon, or NVIDIA silicon, or Intel silicon, simply isn’t so pressing as it perhaps once was.

Meanwhile, the days of premium Android tablets are seemingly behind us, for the most part at least. Apple’s iPad mini and Google’s Nexus 7 forced even more drastic cost-cutting so that Acer, ASUS, MSI, Samsung, and others could continue to compete; the MeMo Pad HD 7 (which runs an ARM chip, not an Intel one) for instance comes in at just $129 brand new. It’s questionable whether the slate segment is the same high-appeal category for Intel now that its margins have been eroded away.

Intel scores in tablet chips but success may come too late is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

ASUS‘ docking Android tablets have fast become a mainstay of its range, and so it comes as little surprise to see the Transformer Pad Infinity get a refresh at Computex 2013 this year. The new version is the first of ASUS’ line-up to use NVIDIA’s new Tegra 4 1.9GHz quadcore, paired here with a 10.1-inch 2,560 x 1,600 IPS display.

The Tegra 4 has four ARM Cortex-A15 CPUs, and a 72-core GeForce GPU, to drive all those touchscreen pixels, with ASUS claiming 178-degree viewing angles from the IPS screen. It’ll also handle 10-point multitouch, while audio is courtesy of an ASUS SonicMaster speaker system.

As well as the internal changes, there’s been some polishing on the keyboard dock, too. That now has a multitouch touchpad, along with new connectivity in the shape of USB 3.0 and an SDXC memory card reader.

However, the most interesting part might be when you hook the Transformer Pad Infinity up to an external display – assuming you have one of sufficiently high resolution to do it justice. The new hybrid can output up to Ultra HD resolution from its HDMI port, though you’ll probably not fit much actual 4K content on the mere 32GB of internal storage.

ASUS also says the docking section is good for extended runtimes, presumably with a bigger battery and a little extra frugality squeezed out of the system itself. Full details of that, along with pricing and availability, will follow on in due course.

ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity gets Tegra 4 upgrade for Ultra HD output is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.