Hasta La Gadget!

Mama always said that some folks just never learn, and we reckon there’s plenty of wisdom to be had from that very statement. Year after year, German police are called in to raid select booths at CeBIT (and IFA, to be fair), and yet again we’ve seen a booth cleared out at the request of powerful lawyers from a few companies you may have heard of. Word on the street has it that Apple, Siemens and Sisvel were all kvetching over patent infringements made by an unnamed company exhibiting at last week’s show, and within an hour or so of the fuzz showing up, the whole thing was stripped and a hefty fine (€10,000) was levied. Unfortunately, the exact details of who was violating what remains clouded in mystery, but for whatever reason, we get the feeling that something extremely similar will be going down in Hannover next year. We blame KIRFers determination.

Updated: Turns out one of our editors at CeBIT saw this whole situation go down at the FirstView booth. Within minutes the entire booth was surrounded by the Polizei, and though we tried to dig further on the situation our inability to speak German caused some communication issues so we decided it best to move on to the next craptablet on the floor. We will, however, always have the shot above to remember the confusing experience.

[Thanks, TheLostSwede]

Apple, Siemens and Sisvel patent infringement leads to CeBIT booth raid originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Doesn’t look too bad for a $95 Android tablet, huh? Well, there’s plenty more where that came from. Scattered along the main halls of CeBIT are dozens of Chinese and Taiwanese consumer electronics resellers looking to sell products to new customers, and this year they sure loaded up the suitcases with cheap Android / Windows CE tablets. For the most part all these tablets (or small smartbooks) have ARM 9 or 11 processors and 5 to 7-inch resistive touch displays. While some like the FirstView PC607V tablet (pictured above) have attractive skins on top of Windows CE, others from companies like Forsa and Huawei have gone with stock versions of Android. In truth, all of the ones we played with felt chintzy, but it was easier to lower our standards when we learned they wouldn’t draw more than $150 from our wallets. We’ve got a hands-on video with FirstView’s Android tablet after the break, but if that doesn’t fill your cheap tablet needs hit the more coverage links for videos by some serious Android / ARM tablet lovers.

Continue reading FirstView’s $95 Android / Windows CE PC607V tips a craptablet iceberg at CeBIT

FirstView’s $95 Android / Windows CE PC607V tips a craptablet iceberg at CeBIT originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure NVIDIA’s Ion 2 is all the rage right now, but ASUS still has a few tricks left in store for the progenitor nettop GPU. The EeeBox EB1501U sports a typical nettop processor — in this case, the older Diamondville Intel Atom 330 dual core — with Ion One, and as an added bonus, there’s USB 3.0 support. Also under the hood? A 2.5-inch, 320GB HDD, DVD drive, and 802.11b/g/n WiFi. As for the other home theater PC box, the EeeMedia EM0501 isn’t quite as exciting — just a 800MHz Samsung ARM processor, a variety of codec supports, and HDMI out. Still, given history, it’s a pretty solid addition. Pricing and availability? Your guess is as good as ours for now. Enjoy the pictures for the time being.

ASUS’ EeeBox EB1501U packs ION and USB 3.0, need we say more? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer has rolled into CeBIT with a few all-new systems, but it’s also taken the opportunity to introduce some updates to its existing models, including six new revisions to its Aspire and TravelMate lines. Leading things off are the high(ish)-end Aspire 8942 and Aspire 5942, which pack 18.4 and 15.6-inch displays, your choice of the latest 2010 Core processors, an integrated TV tuner, up to 8GB of RAM, up to 1.2TB of storage (courtesy of to 640GB drives), and some niceties like a multitouch trackpad, and a CineSurround sound system with a “Tuba CineBass” booster. It’s joined by the TravelMate 8372 Timeline series, which is itself available in 13.3-, 14-, and 15.6-inch varieties with Core i3, i5 and i7 processors, and the 15.6-inch Acer TravelMate 6594, which packs a Core i5 or i7 processor and ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics. Rounding out the standard laptops are the 17.3-inch Acer TravelMate 7740 and 15.6-inch 5740, which come equipped with Core i3 or i5 processors, up to 8GB of RAM, and either integrated or ATI Radeon HD5470 graphics.

As if that wasn’t enough, Acer has also introduced the new 11.6-inch Aspire One 752 netbook, which actually packs a Celeron ULV processor instead of the usual Atom, and the Aspire Predator G7750 gaming PC, which finishes things off in a suitably over-the-top fashion with a Core i7 Extreme Edition processor, liquid cooling, dual LAN connectivity, swappable hard drive bays, and support for Acer’s GD245HQ 3D monitor. Hit up the gallery below for a closer look at some of the offerings.

Filed under: Laptops

Acer kicks out laptop, netbook upgrades aplenty at CeBIT originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some people have soft spots for puppies and panda bears; we have them for tiny laptops. Claiming to be the world’s smallest computer, USmart’s 4.8-inch MC-1 is about the size of a man’s wallet yet manages to pack the guts of a netbook. That’s right in that tiny little chassis is a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 CPU, 1GB of RAM and 4GB of on-board storage. What it doesn’t have is some sort of fan; when we put the little guy in our hand it was quite toasty. Wondering how in the world one would navigate Windows XP on such a small screen? Like the 4.8-inch UMID MBook BZ, it has a resistive touchscreen and comes with a stylus, but USmart will also sell an external touchpad / keyboard combo that’s bound to be more comfortable. We’re strongly questioning the practicality of this $300 device and its title of “world’s smallest computer,” but can you really argue with something so adorable? How about you tell us after checking out the video after the break.

Continue reading USmart’s MC-1 claims ‘world’s smallest’ title, certainly wins over our hearts

USmart’s MC-1 claims ‘world’s smallest’ title, certainly wins over our hearts originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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