Hasta La Gadget!

The Slate PC, from French multitouch company Stantum, is essentially a Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbook with the keyboard chopped off and a multitouch screen grafted on. It runs Windows 7. It is also proof that a desktop OS should never be forced onto a tablet computer.

I tested an early, proof-of-concept model. But even in this early version, you can tell that Stantum is headed down the wrong path.

The first thing you notice is the odd section missing from the long edge, just where the hinge would be on a normal netbook. This is the top edge of the battery, and the gap is indeed the gap left by the old flip-open screen. In fact, the computer is the base of the donor Dell with the touchscreen put where the keyboard would be. Cheap, but inelegant.

Then you fire it up. I handed it off to the Lady, as we were eating breakfast in bed (she has to deal with gadgets before morning coffee. It’s a part of the glamorous gadget lifestyle). First she was flipping it around and around: On boot, if you hold the machine label-up, the boot screen is upside down. Of course, you turn it, but then the display flips again.

Once it was actually on, she asked me, “Are you supposed to hold it like this?” while holding like it a book. “It’s too heavy. Here, take it back.”

And it is heavy, at a touch over 1 kg, or 2.2 pounds. By comparison, the heaviest iPad will be 0.73 kg, or 1.6 pounds. It is over an inch thick, too, or double the depth of the iPad.

But the real problem comes with use. Windows 7 is a desktop OS, built with small buttons and scroll bars that are designed for the pixel-accurate tip of a mouse pointer, not a fat finger. It is so frustrating to control that I started using the pen of my Wacom tablet instead. I then gave up on that and plugged in a mouse and keyboard, at least for the initial setup of Wi-Fi passwords and the like.

To be fair, this is a proof-of-concept, so some of the design oddities may be smoothed over in the future. And the included test applications — which are actually designed for multitouch use — work fine. They’re simple games and drawing programs, but they show that the resistive touchscreen actually works and is responsive.

The real problem here is Windows 7. And lest you think that I’m singling out Microsoft, it would be equally bad with OS X. These operating systems just aren’t made for tablets.

How bad is it? The onscreen keyboard, for one, needs to be popped up manually when you need it (usually –- sometimes it is automatic). Once it appears, the keyboard is almost impossible to type on. It’s actually a lot harder to use than the iPhone’s tiny QWERTY. And what if you want to use the browser in full-screen mode, say to use the new Google Reader Play news reader? Good luck with that. You can enter full-screen mode just fine, with the instruction to hit F11 to get back to the normal view. The problem? Once you’re in full-screen mode, there is no F11, and there’s no other way back. You have to either plug in a keyboard or yank the battery to restart.

This might explain why Bill Gates said that the iPad could do with “voice, the pen and a real keyboard.”

The hardware is also rather poor. I’m not sure why, but it runs a lot slower than my hackintoshed MSI Wind, a machine over a year old. The Dell has trouble with video (stuttery in YouTube and crash-prone in the media player) and even flipping between the one or two open applications is slow. Again, this isn’t the fault of the Stantum mod, but if you’re going to send out a test machine, better to send one that works.

These aren’t yet for sale, although hand-made prototypes can be ordered for around $1,000. As the Dell it is based on costs $300, that seems like a steep markup for the mere addition of a touchscreen and a few simple apps.

The slate market isn’t going to move anywhere without custom-designed software. Until we get proper Chrome OS netbooks or Android-based tablets, Apple is about the only company doing custom tablet software right now.

To finish, I’ll leave you with a word from the Lady. I told her I was writing this review today. She said “Good. The sooner you review it, the sooner you can send it back.”

Slate PC [Stantum]

Photo: Charlie Sorrel

At last, we’ve felt Sony’s long awaited motion controller, now at last officially known as “PlayStation Move,” in our unworthy, sweaty hands. We have a bunch of videos on the way, but for now you can revel in our first close-ups of the controllers in the gallery below. Here are some of our initial thoughts:

• The controllers are light. Much more akin to the DualShock3 than the Wiimote in heft, and we’re guessing that’s due to Sony’s continued love of rechargeable batteries.
• The main controller does have some subtle vibration (not DualShock or Wiimote level, but present), but we’re not sure yet about the subcontroller.
• We hate to say this about “pre-alpha” software, but we’re feeling lag. An on-rails shooter we tried out, dubbed The Shoot, was discernibly inferior to shooting experiences we’ve had on the Wii, both in precision and refresh rate of the aiming cursor.
• The gladiator game is about as fun as it looks, we’ll have video after the break momentarily. Unfortunately, while it’s less of a defined experience than something like the sword game on Wii Sports Resort, you’re still working through a library of sensed, pre-defined actions instead of a true 1:1 fighting game with simulated physics. Not that it isn’t possible with PlayStation Move, just that it’s not this.
• The lightness of the controllers means we might be feeling less of that Wiimote fatigue, always a good thing! There’s an aspect of the controller that feels a little cheap, but at the same time we wouldn’t call it fragile.
• As far as we can tell, the control scheme for Socom 4 is quite similar to dual-controller shooter setups on the Wii, with the camera moving based on your aiming cursor hitting the edge. It’s hard to see this as the preferred hardcore setup, but we’re told it’s configurable, so we’ll try and see what else is on offer.
• The system seemed to have a bit of trouble understanding the configuration of our body in a swordfighting stance: even though we selected “left handed,” it was putting our sword arm forward instead of our shield. Right-handers didn’t seem to have similar problems, and we’re sure this will be ironed out in time, but it certainly shows that the controllers aren’t magical in their space-detection prowess.
• As would be expected, you’re supposed to stand relatively center on the TV, and at a certain optimal distance. The system is forgiving, but there’s a sweet spot that users will undoubtedly have to learn.
• Lag is less prominent on Socom 4, and we’d say we’re pretty accurate with the controller already, though the framerate choppiness of this pre-alpha build obviously hampers that a bit. We did get a slight feel of being in “scene to scene” shootouts instead of a free-roaming FPS, perhaps a design choice to mitigate the limited camera movement offered by the controller, but we’ll have to see more levels to know for sure.

Update: We added in a longer video — are you ready for three minutes of nonstop excitement?

Update, final edition: We’ve got a new video with close-up walkthroughs of the controllers and some in-depth gameplay of Socom 4.

Continue reading PlayStation Move first hands-on (update: video!)

PlayStation Move first hands-on (update: video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alright, we’re going to be straight with you: you’re not going to like this. See, Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0, but wouldn’t let us nab a single photo or video of the process. What we can tell you is that they exist, they work, and at least Microsoft tossed us some screenshots to wave in your face. The two titles are The Harvest (pictured), a good looking touch-controlled dungeon crawler with destructible environments, being developed by Luma Arcade; and Battle Punks, a less impressive one-on-one sword fighting Facebook game by Gravity Bear that’s being ported over. We didn’t get to see any full motion 3D camera moves, since Battle Punks is just composed of two characters duking it out, and The Harvest has a fixed camera and some pre-rendered elements, but there were indeed some real polygons being crunched before our eyes at a full resolution (no upscaling), alpha-rev, choppy framerate, and we were assured that full screen 3D was possible. We also got to see one of our first glimpses of universal notifications on Windows Phone: Achievement unlock notices (also pictured above) that slide down from the top of the screen in a black bar and then slide back, and can’t be interacted with. Follow after the break for some more nerdy details, along with a video of VisualStudio in action, and screenshots of the two games are in the gallery below.

Continue reading Microsoft shows off XNA games running on Windows Phone, full 3D is a go

Microsoft shows off XNA games running on Windows Phone, full 3D is a go originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ll just come right out and say it: Guitar Hero and Rock Band should watch their back, ’cause there’s a better-than-decent chance that Power Gig will be all the rage this holiday season. Seven45 Studios is a heretofore unheard of upstart with roots in First Act, and unlike the vast majority of game developers, these guys actually have a direct hand in the production of the software and hardware associated with this package. They’ll be designing the Power Gig video game series (Rise of the SixString is only the first installment) as well as the guitars, drums and microphones in-house, and given the First Act roots, you know you’ll be getting instruments of higher quality than what’s on the market today. Oh, and yes, we didn’t misspeak when we pluralized “guitars” and mentioned those other two devices.

We had a sit down with the team today at GDC, and besides coming away impressed with the alpha build of the game and the prototype axes we saw, we also learned quite a bit more about their plans than what was revealed in this morning’s press release. Just to be exceptionally clear, Seven45 Studios will not only sell their upcoming title as a standalone product, but it will sell a “band bundle” that includes the game, a guitar (plus a strap, picks and an extra set of strings), a drum set and a microphone, the latter two of which are still very early in production and weren’t available for us to test. The beat matching setup that gamers have grown used to in Rock Band and Guitar Hero is still there, but most everything else is new; a “chording” addition will allow users to strum actual power chords that match the chords used in the song, giving newbies the ability to actually learn songs as they play the game if they want to. In other words, if users strum the same chords required to succeed in the game but through an amp, they’ll be playing the actual song; if you’d rather not learn, you need not have any clue how to play a guitar to enjoy the game. Speaking of which, the bundled guitar (along with extra guitars that are still being sorted in terms of size, material and color) doubles as a legitimate six string by simply depressing the dampening pad beneath the neck, and while it won’t match the crisp tone emitted from your Les Paul Custom, the prototype we heard here in San Francisco sounded just fine for a beginner’s instrument. We also learned that existing Rock Band and Guitar Hero guitars will work with the Power Gig titles, and Seven45’s guitars will work with existing music band games — not bad!

More after the break…

Continue reading Seven45 Studios talks Power Gig details, we go hands-on with its six string guitar peripheral

Seven45 Studios talks Power Gig details, we go hands-on with its six string guitar peripheral originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the market for a new HTPC? Then you’ll probably be wanting the slimmest possible enclosure that can still fit an optical drive and the grunt to power through HD video. Set aside some of your attention for Shuttle’s XS35, in that case, as this 3.3cm-thick slab of engineering contains an Atom D510 (yawn) paired with NVIDIA Ion 2 graphics (yay!), which should in concert deliver buttery smooth 1080p playback, whether through Flash or Blu-ray discs. The integrated optical drive can’t run those fancy discs from what we know, but you could easily swap it out with a slimline BR burner, jack your favorite HDMI cable into the back, and have the perfect little movie box. It’s passively cooled so there’ll be no fan noise, and its price should be pretty endearing considering the aggressively priced competition from Zotac and Acer. See the XS35 in its metallic flesh after the break.

[Thanks, JC]

Continue reading Shuttle’s ION 2-equipped XS35 shows off its slimline nettop credentials in hands-on video

Shuttle’s ION 2-equipped XS35 shows off its slimline nettop credentials in hands-on video originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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