Hasta La Gadget!

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; ASUS has taken this old adage to heart, offering up some moderate, but worthwhile changes to its latest consumer and 3D monitor lines. Retaining the award-winning style of its Designo series, the outfit is launching a trio of new 22-, 23-, and 24-inch IPS and VA panel displays — each vaunting a 178-degree viewing angle, 1920 x 1080 resolution as well as more accurate color reproduction and a higher contrast ratio than previous models. Too bad this change didn’t carry over to ASUS’ 3D line — despite adding an integrated IR transmitter for NVIDIA 3D Vision, the 1080p 27-inch LED VG278H sports a backlit TN panel (boo), same as its predecessor. But hey, at least the integrated transmitter ought to free up some desk space… right? No official price on these just yet, but check out the more coverage link below for a spate of eyes-on impressions.

[Thanks, TheLostSwede]

ASUS debuts, showcases new 3D and IPS-based Designo displays originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Kinect hacks, performance art edition: pin boards, puppets and RoboThespians

Kinect hacks, performance art edition: pin boards, puppets and RoboThespians originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Mar 2011 03:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS (A-seuss) CEO Jerry Shen is rarely a man without a good quote or two for journalists and this year’s CeBIT has been no exception. Sitting down for a chat with some Russian scribes, Shen outlined ASUS’ general product roadmap, which includes a 3D tablet (the iPad 2-threatening secret weapon, perhaps?), Atom-based netbooks for both MeeGo and Android platforms, and a Windows Phone device that should be with us next year. An aside from his PR aide Mae Wang also states that ASUS aims to be second in the tablet market by 2012, with a giant five to eight percent market share. We’re sure the Apple board are all shaking in their hemp sandals right now. Anyhow, hit up the source for the full story.

ASUS’ Jerry Shen pledges 3D tablet, MeeGo and Android netbooks, plus a 2012 Windows Phone originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Mar 2011 09:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Though there are bigger multitouch screens out there — and ones that can support more simultaneous touch points — 3M’s brand new C3266PW is the company’s largest, said to be suited for industrial-strength installations with multiple simultaneous users (the company is quick to note that the ultra-wide 178-degree viewing angle along both axes is great for that, since folks can crowd around and start touching). They demoed the new unit here at CeBIT in two ways: three of them in a row on a “cascade table” with one high, one slanted, and one low, and another separate unit mounted on a solo kiosk at roughly eye level. The table’s set up as a multi-display Windows box running a tech demo with maps, images, and videos that can be flicked between screens, pinched, and zoomed; the kiosk, meanwhile, is running a rudimentary flight simulator designed to demonstrate all ten points of multitouch capability at once with a finger-based aircraft control scheme (not the way you’d really design a game, but a good demo nonetheless).

3M points out that touch response — the amount of time that it takes the screen to actually recognize that it’s been touched — is an issue in the industry, and it’s not something that we really think about as users; if a gesture is laggy, we just assume the processor isn’t up to the task or the software sucks. The C3266PW is rated at a relatively brisk 12ms recognition time, and while the company has other products with even quicker ratings, we definitely noticed the lack of lag as we played around (of course, the computers powering the displays have plenty to do with that). We’ve come to associate good capacitive displays with glossy glass and resistive with matte, but that’s really not a fair assessment — this one has a non-glare “anti-stiction coating” that, as its name implies, makes your fingers glide like butter. It might not be great for a phone, but it works well for a display of this size that’s probably going to be used in public installations and potentially handled by hundreds of people a day. Follow the break for 3M’s press release and video of both setups!

Continue reading 3M’s 32-inch display with 10-finger multitouch steps out at CeBIT (video)

3M’s 32-inch display with 10-finger multitouch steps out at CeBIT (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 17:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Unless you’re eagerly anticipating your IT department handing one of these to you, something tells us the Stylistic Q550 isn’t the tablet you’re looking for. Why’s that? Everything about the experience screams “corporate,” starting with our time at Fujitsu’s booth earlier today where business dealings to deploy the tablet in some corporate environment were literally happening before our very eyes. There was only one unit in the vicinity — and the suits were relentless in trying to get their paws on it — but we spent just long enough with it to figure out that there are far, far better-suited consumer options out there; as far as we can tell, that’s exactly how Fujitsu wants it. That opinion was further reinforced by the presence of a smart card reader on the side (for secure logins), a fingerprint scanner on back, and old-school pen input, which Fujitsu tells us that legacy tablet users (read: medical personnel and field data entry folks) still want. It can take fingers, too, but we felt like the quality of the display is compromised a bit for the dual-mode support. Interestingly, there’s no place to store the pen in the tablet anyway; you’ll need the accessory case for that.

The company is talking about its custom Windows 7 skin as a key differentiator. The build they had on the demo unit was a little buggy, but at any rate, we came away with the impression that it’s basically just a finger-friendly view to launch apps; fortunately, the full Windows experience — which is just as non-touch-optimized as ever — is just a tap away. We were hoping the Oak Trail guts would keep everything snappy, but the pre-release code here was actually lagging pretty badly as we navigated from screen to screen. Don’t get us wrong: we’re sure these are precisely the specs that some enterprise customers are looking for… but as an individual, gadget-loving, tablet-wanting human being, we’re pretty sure they aren’t the specs that you’re looking for.

Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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