Hasta La Gadget!

If you’ve been dying to get your hands on a ThinkPad netbook — and we mean a real Atom-based, 10-inch ThinkPad — we’ve got some good news and bad. The good is that Lenovo has indeed been making them, the bad is that you’ll have to enroll in a school in New South Wales to get one. Yep, the official word from Lenovo is that the product was a one off deal for the Australian school district. Luckily one unit escaped from the land down under and ended up in our hands yesterday, though we must admit the little laptop is pretty underwhelming since it’s just a X100e with a 1024×600 10-inch screen, rather than the original 11.6-inch one. But if an overflowing bezel is your thing, you’ll want to enroll in Summer Heights High ASAP (video after the break for those that are unfamiliar with the amazing, yet expired HBO show). We also confirmed that it has an 1.6GHz Atom N450 processor, which has less power than the AMD Neo being used in the X100e, but we’d venture to guess pumps out at least two more hours of juice with the same six-cell battery. The hands-on pictures below are probably the closest you’ll come to seeing one of these, so click on through.

Continue reading Lenovo ThinkPad Mini 10 lives, but only for Aussie students

Lenovo ThinkPad Mini 10 lives, but only for Aussie students originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 19:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For tablet enthusiasts who want a device that’s not created by Apple, the HP Slate — a tablet with iPad-like styling but running Windows — seems a promising option.

But a Mexican site that played with an early version of the Slate is not impressed. The OS takes too long to load, which can be “annoying,” says Conecti.ca.

Last month, HP released its first video introducing the HP Slate, a tablet that will run Windows 7. The Slate is likely to have a built-in camera, video-recording capability, USB port and a SD card reader — all features pointedly aimed at the iPad, which lacks all four — and will support Adobe Flash. The HP Slate will also include access to Skype, an iTunes-like music store, integration with Flickr and the Firefox browser.

HP hasn’t confirmed pricing or availability for the product. But a leaked company document suggested the Slate could cost $550 or $600 for the 32 GB and 64 GB models, respectively.

HP hasn’t demoed the Slate yet publicly but it has deliberately leaked a few highly edited videos of the device. Conecti.ca confirms most of the specs that have leaked out for the Slate, but says HP’s tablet is more of a competitor for netbooks than the Apple iPad.

The site, which has posted a gallery of photos for the Slate, has one word for it: “meh.”

See Also:

• HP Slate Details Leaked: $550 Netbook, Minus Keyboard
• HP’s Windows 7 Slate Strikes at the iPad
• HP Offers Another Peek at its Tablet, Specs Leaked?
• Gallery: 8 Tablets That Aren’t Made by Apple

[via PC World]

We’ve just spent some time handling Microsoft’s just-announced Kin One and Kin Two, and we’re not sure what to think; the keyboards have surprisingly good feel, particularly the One (think Palm Pre levels of usability on the One, for example — we wouldn’t be surprised if it was their benchmark) and the phones generally feel pretty solid. In fact, we’d go so far to say that this is a marked improvement in hardware quality for Sharp than any of its Sidekicks ever offered. Problem is, we just can’t get over the fact that the software is extremely limited in its scope — yes, we understand that it’s by design, but does this so-called “upload generation” of socially-connected teens and twentysomethings really want a phone that they can’t download games to? That’s the million-dollar question that Verizon will be answering over the next few months, it seems.

We know that the One is positioned as the slightly lower-end device on account of its 5 megapixel cam (the Two has 8) and half the internal storage, but we actually came away liking it more — it’s the only one of the two that looks truly unique, because the Two just looks like any old landscape slider smartphone (not to say that’s necessarily a bad thing). The front of both devices is graced with a single metallic button to offset an otherwise clean glossy black bezel — this button functions as Back, not Home, so if you’re multiple levels deep into the UI you’ll only be taken back one. You can still hold the button down to get back to the home screen, fortunately, and both the One and Two have dedicated camera buttons — Microsoft’s making no secret of the fact that image and video capture are a huge push for these devices.

Follow the break for more thoughts, shots, and video!

Continue reading Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two first hands-on!

Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two first hands-on! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Another fine day in paradise, another fine external hard drive for archivists to consider. Seagate has just announced its latest FreeAgent Go USB 2.0 drive, a pocket-sized external HDD with a 2.5-inch 500GB disc in there ready to be stuffed with your favorite blurred images and shakycam videos from the decade that was… except for the 20GB or so that’s already claimed. In a move that may or may not be indicative of forward progress in the fight to free digital content, Seagate has partnered with Paramount Pictures in order to pre-load these drives with Star Trek (yes, the 2009 version), which can be unlocked gratis and shuffled about as you please after you register the drive. Additionally, 20 other titles are pre-loaded, and those guys can be “easily and securely unlocked through the online purchase of a license key,” with pricing ranging from $9.99 to $14.99 per film. We had an opportunity to fire up Star Trek, and we must say — the whole unlocking process was pretty painless on a Windows 7 rig. We didn’t splurge on a third ninth copy of Nacho Libre, but we’re pretty sure that masterpiece would be similarly easy to tap into. Oh, and if you’d rather just have free space rather than movies you already own / couldn’t care less about, the delete command works wonders.

Continue reading Seagate teams with Paramount, pre-loads movies onto 500GB FreeAgent Go

Seagate teams with Paramount, pre-loads movies onto 500GB FreeAgent Go originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Festo may’ve already stirred up plenty of attention with its mesmerizing AirPenguin blimp, but let’s not forget its other weapon — fluidic muscles (elastomer tubes that contract when filled with fluid). At The Gadget Show Live in the UK, this German company was also showing off its AirMotion Ride car-racing simulator — essentially a driver’s seat suspended from just six fluidic muscles for the six degrees of freedom, while sound and vision are handled by its 5.1 surround sound speakers and a projector. The company claims that each of these lightweight muscles can generate forces of up to 1,600N, and since there are no mechanical parts inside, they make an ideal replacement for conventional hydraulic plungers as used on Force Dynamics’ and Motion-Sim’s simulators. You can see Festo’s machine in action after the break, but promise us that you won’t judge our driving ability.

Continue reading Engadget test-drives Festo AirMotion Ride, humiliates self (video)

Engadget test-drives Festo AirMotion Ride, humiliates self (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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