Hasta La Gadget!

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Last week’s Switched On discussed how some next wave notions from a decade ago were trying to reinvent themselves. Here’s one more. Surging smartphone vendor HTC is seeking to bring back an input method that many wrote off long ago with its forthcoming Flyer tablet and EVO View 4G comrade-in-arms: the stylus.

A fixture of early Palm and Psion PDAs, Pocket PCs and Windows Mobile handsets, slim, compact styli were once the most popular thing to slip down a well since Timmy. Then, users would poke the cheap, simple sticks at similarly inexpensive resistive touchscreens. After the debut of tablet PCs, though, more companies started to use active digitizer systems like the one inside the Flyer. Active pens offer more precision, which can help with tasks such as handwriting recognition, and support “hovering” above a screen, the functional equivalent of a mouseover. On the other hand, they are also thicker, more expensive, and need to be charged. (Update: as some have pointed out in comments, Wacom’s tablets generate tiny electromagnetic fields that power active digitization, and don’t require the pen to store electricity itself.) And, of course, just like passive styli, active pens take up space and can be misplaced.

The 2004 debut of the Nintendo DS — the ancestor of the just-released 3DS — marked the beginning of what has become the last mass-market consumer electronics product series to integrate stylus input. The rising popularity of capacitive touch screens and multitouch have replaced styli with fingers as the main user interface elements. Instead of using a precise point for tasks such as placing an insertion point in text, we now expand the text dynamically to accommodate our oily instruments. On-screen buttons have also grown, as have the screens themselves, all in the name of losing a contrivance.

Continue reading Switched On: Pen again

Switched On: Pen again originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 10 Apr 2011 19:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Just in time for spring, ASUS has refreshed its Lamborghini VX7, a staple in the company’s line of premium notebooks (and fugly smartphones) inspired by the storied Italian car maker. Available in orange and a more staid black, this 8.4-pound beast packs a quad-core Sandy Bridge Intel Core i7 processor, Full HD 15.6-inch display, discrete NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M graphics with 3GB of video memory, up to 16GB of RAM, an 8-cell battery, one USB 3.0 port (along with three USB 2.0 ones), HDMI output, a 2 megapixel webcam, and hard drive space ranging from 500GB to 750GB with speeds of either 5,400RPM or 7,200RPM. Or, you can opt for an SSD as large as 1.25TB. (ASUS likens the speeds to a 10,000 RPM drive.) No word yet on pricing or availability, though we’re pretty sure Valentino Balboni won’t be ponying up to type on one of these either way.

Update: A couple sites are taking pre-orders, with the VX7 consistently priced at $2,269. Have at ’em!

ASUS refreshes Lamborghini VX7 with Sandy Bridge, mercifully offers a black option originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink MobileTechReview  |  Softpedia, ExcaliberPC, XoticPC  | Email this | Comments

Never mind the cringe-inducing advertising, ASUS has given us a much better reason to care about its Tegra 2-toting Eee Pad Transformer: a $400 price. The 10.1-inch Honeycomb tablet (with 1280 x 800 resolution on an IPS display) has quickly moved from its Taiwanese release, through yesterday’s UK pricing announcement, to today showing up at Best Buy in the US, so we suspect its global shipping can’t be far off at all. With a sticker that’s a clear $99 less than the cheapest iPad and a good deal more affordable than its Android competition like the Xoom and G-Slate, the Transformer could yet take the tablet world by storm. Do take note that the keyboard dock that inspires this slate’s name is an optional extra, but given the starting price, the whole package might still end up less than what others will ask.

Update: Whack attack! Best Buy has pulled the Transformer page and it no longer shows up in search results on the site. Was the price too good to be true? Thanks, Jaime!

Update 2: It’s looking likely that the price info was accurate, as 16GB and 32GB versions have shown up elsewhere on the web for $400 and $500, respectively, though both are currently out of stock. Thanks, Sam and James!

Update 3: Ah, and now we have the price for the dock alone: $149. Thanks, Peter C.!

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer shows up at Best Buy for $400 (update: dock price) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Netbook News  |  Best Buy, Newegg  | Email this | Comments

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. How well can a tablet OS run on a laptop?

Looks like Asus couldn’t decide whether it wanted to make a tablet or a netbook, so it made both. The Eee Pad Transformer is a tablet which docks itself to a hinged keyboard and offers a long, long battery life of 16 hours.

It will be very interesting to see if this actually works. The tablet component uses the 1GHz Tegra 2 processor, has 1GB RAM, a Gorilla Glass multitouch screen (10.1 inches), 1.2 and 5MP cameras, gyroscope, compass, GPS and so on. The keyboard is little more than a dock with a trackpad and battery (without the dock, the battery life drops to 9.5 hours).

It seems like a great idea, but I wonder just how well the Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS plays with keyboard and trackpad. Anyone who has teamed the iPad up with an external keyboard knows that it works great if you have some text to type, but anything else is a pain. The OS just isn’t designed to be controlled with a keyboard.

Still, if you’re going to carry a keyboard with you, the extra battery life is nice.

Prices are still unannounced, as are U.S launch dates, but you can see a full spec sheet in the linked press release, and if you live in Taiwan, you can pick one up today.

ASUS Transformer Eee Pad Official Taiwan Release Coming Friday [Netbook News]

See Also:

• Topic Page for ASUS Eee Pad
• Upcoming Asus Tablets Will Run Android Honeycomb

Never mind the fact that Intel’s outing a mid-range laptop CPU long after the highest of high-end — the 2.53GHz Core i5-2520M is shaping up to be a lovely option for those who’d prefer a budget choice with plenty of horsepower for churning through HD video. The benchmarking gurus over at Hot Hardware recently grabbed hold of the new silicon, and they noticed an “unmatched performance-per-watt profile for mobile CPUs,” not to mention a robust graphics core, “ridiculously low idle power consumption,” a respectable price point and plenty of power for any software title not named Crysis 2. ASUS’ 15.6-inch K53E was the test machine, and with a starting tag of just $899, it’s definitely a compelling package. Based on their testing, this particular CPU was around 15 to 25 percent faster across the board compared to its previous generation 2.5GHz Arrandale counterpart, and that’s with around the same power draw, too. Hit the source link for more charts than you’d care to see on an average workday, and be on the lookout for this chip to hit a whole slew of new rigs in the coming weeks.

ASUS’ K53E laptop gets reviewed, 2.53GHz Core i5-2520M CPU gets praised originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Hot Hardware  | Email this | Comments