Hasta La Gadget!

It wasn’t that long ago that a bathroom scale was the only gadget you needed to track weight loss. Today even videogame consoles, once the bane of the fitness industry, are trying to help you recycle that spare tire, and of course there’s no shortage of specialty doo-dads getting in on the action. The Fitbit is one of those, a little accelerometer that pledges to keep an eye on what you do so that you can just go ahead and do it, reporting back at the end of the day on how well you did at staying active. It sounds nice, but it’s not quite that self-sufficient. Read on to see if it’s worth the commitment.

Continue reading Fitbit review

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wearables

Fitbit review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

As CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates would often talk about his dream of “information at your fingertips.” The company he co-founded, though, is now taking literal steps toward that goal. By the end of the month, Microsoft will have released three new devices or platforms that embrace or extend touchscreen support — but the impact touch will have on each varies significantly by their legacy, usage, and manufacturers.

Windows has long had touchscreen support. Such support, in fact, was the basis of the Tablet Edition of Windows XP, and Tablet PCs were proclaimed to be the future of notebooks. Early iterations were larger and thicker keyboard-lacking slates much like the new Archos 9pctablet. But this was before rampant Web browsing, streaming video, casual games and electronic books — all of which now provide relevance for a new generation of touchscreen PCs as content-consumption devices.

Continue reading Switched On: Microsoft’s touchy subjects

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video, Tablet PCs

Switched On: Microsoft’s touchy subjects originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Flip Video just launched a new “premium” take on the MinoHD — it’s fundamentally the same as the existing MinoHD, but with 8GB of storage, a bigger two-inch screen and an HDMI port, all wrapped up in either a sleek aluminum shell or a personalized design from the Flip website. The 8GB of flash means the MinoHD can now record up to two hours of 720p video, and while there’s still no image stabilizer, it’s not like that’s stopped anyone from loving the MinoHD before. There’s also a new version of the FlipShare software, which features an automatic Magic Movie mode that’ll trim and edit before shooting your video to Facebook, YouTube and MySpace. We’re sure the kids will love it, but we’d rather do things the old-fashioned way. The new premium model will sell for $229, while the original MinoHD remains on sale for $199 and the old-school Mino hangs back at $149. After some time playing around with one, we’d say you’re well-justified in dropping the extra $30 here — the newer case and screen are quite nice, and HDMI-out is nothing to sneeze at. It’s still the same MinoHD as far as image quality goes, however, so don’t walk into this one expecting any surprises — and no fancy al-yoo-min-ium case will quell the need for a proper stabilizer in these things. Video after the break!

Continue reading Flip MinoHD goes premium, we go hands-on

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Flip MinoHD goes premium, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember gCubik? It’s been a few months, but to recap, it’s a cube developed by researchers from NICT that features textured surfaces that present you a different view on the “internal” image based on viewing angle, giving the illusion something is physically in the box. Theoretically, at least — it’s pretty low-resolution and in the early stages of development. We stumbled upon the device at the CEATEC showfloor this week and decided to snap some video while there. There were moments when the effect was lost, and getting too close completely blurred what we saw to the point of incomprehension, but again, this shows a whole heap of potential that’s fascinating to us. See it for yourself after the break.

Continue reading gCubik shows off its good side, and every other while it’s at it (video)

Filed under: Displays

gCubik shows off its good side, and every other while it’s at it (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Can’t say we’ve ever seen this beaut from Lenovo before. Unassumingly tucked away along a number of already-released laptops at the Intel booth, the 11.6-inch IdeaPad U150 is a lightweight with some interesting textures tattooed on its exterior. There wasn’t a lot of details at the booth beyond its name, but from what’s been unearthed via an xmit online product listing, it’s got a Core 2 Duo SU4100 with integrated GMA X4500 graphics, meaning we’re falling away from netbooks and into CULV territory. Performance-wise, we couldn’t get into it far enough to check the full specs and run some tests, but as you can see in the video after the break, the boot time is not-quite-noteworthy 30 seconds long. Small, light, and more umph than Atom? Sounds like a winning combination, if the price is right. No official word on that, but xmit lists approximately $770 as the cost to own.

[Product page via Liliputing and Netbooked]

Continue reading Lenovo IdeaPad U150 found hiding in plain sight at CEATEC (video)

Filed under: Laptops

Lenovo IdeaPad U150 found hiding in plain sight at CEATEC (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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