There are plenty of ways to be green these days, but without some sort of feedback it’s hard to know just what shade you are. Enter Google’s PowerMeter, a service that tells you how much current you’re responsible for consuming. Why, it even shades its bar graphs in green, getting more pale the greedier you become. Google has partnerships with some utility companies in the US, Canada, and India, meaning a select few of you can do this sort of tracking by default. The rest of us were left out — until now. Two devices on the market let you track your usage in PowerMeter regardless of just how backwards your utility company is: The Energy Detective’s TED 5000 and the AlertMe Energy. We’ve been experimenting with these two for about a month now, finding that they serve the same purpose in very different ways and at very different costs. Click on through to see which one can best help you get greener.
From the webcast yesterday, the JooJoo (previously named Crunchpad) seemed flimsy and barely working. But now that we spent a good deal of hands on time with it, we can say that Fusion Garage executed an internet tablet quite well.
Specs
Here are some new facts I gathered from the meeting. First, the device runs a 1.6GHz Atom processor with 1GB RAM. The guys at JooJoo said they weren’t ready to reveal specs yet, but I saw the bootup sequence—a standard BIOS setup that displayed what it was booting to—and saw the specs. Chandra, CEO of Fusion Garage, says that the demo hardware was basically the final hardware, so it’s easy to put two and two together.
As for the graphics card + CPU combination, it’s probably an Nvidia Ion chipset. They claim that it handles 1080p YouTube video fine—we only got to see a few seconds of 720p and 1080p HD YouTube video because the internet connection was acting up—so it’s probably an Ion. But the HD video we tested looked just fine on its 12-inch, 1366×768 resolution screen. Again, the Ion chipset is just an educated guess, but there are few other hardware options that can handle 1080p video smoothly, and an Atom CPU by itself (which we did see) can’t do it on its own.
There is a headphone jack, a microphone jack, a built-in webcam at 1.3 megapixels, a charging port and a USB slot. The external card slot present in the prototype isn’t going to make it to the final version, but they are thinking of making it available to put a 3G card in there in the future. No TV out/HDMI out yet, but they are thinking about that. There are built-in speakers for playing back audio without headphones, and they’re decent enough that you can actually listen to them, but you’ll want to plug them in to speakers for any kind of extended video consumption.
Performance
The tablet actually handled pretty well, with browsing web pages, transitioning between tabs (windows) and opening up new web pages working fine. There’s an accelerometer in there to detect between vertical and horizontal orientations.
The body is solid, sturdy and graced with a bright 12-inch screen. The back is curved and made of a plastic that feels nice in your hand, and the whole thing doesn’t seem too heavy to prop up on a bed or a toilet.
In short, it’s an actual web browsing tablet that you’d be perfectly fine using.
The software
The entire system is basically a gateway to your browser, which is based off WebKit, the same code that powers Safari and Google’s Chrome. It’s fast, and handles gestures (pinching to go back a level, swiping to move up and down) just fine. There are other gestures that will be included in the final build, like two finger swiping for going back and forth in history and a bookmark swipe, but we didn’t get to see that. But, you can’t zoom into text. That’s partially because the pinching is already used for going in and out of your windows into the home screen, but also partially because the screen is 12 inches. You don’t need to really zoom into text on a laptop-sized screen of 12 inches. And they also said they may make LARGER sized tablets as well, with 12 being their smallest size.
JooJoo’s keyboard looks like this, and takes up only a portion of the screen. It’s usable, but you don’t want to use it to bang out a blog post; this is mainly for consuming media.
Fusion Garage’s concept for the product is that the “internet is the application”, which means you can’t save photos or files locally and you can’t access any of the 4GB of storage to do any user level stuff. The most you can dictate is how much each internet application (e.g. Gmail or Google Wave) can have for a local cache.
It does support Flash as usual, except when you play HD Flash it’ll force you into fullscreen mode to render better/faster. And if you want to read PDFs, it’ll force you into Google’s web-based PDF doc reader. So it handles PDFs, but not “natively”.
Your home screen is composed almost entirely of icons—shortcuts—to web applications. The screen is customizable with your own applications, eventually, and has a weird feature where it displays a different color background whenever you go back to it. Fusion Garage is thinking of taking this out, or swapping it with some other feature.
As for multitasking, Fusion Garage says that they will have specific APIs available to webapps to incorporate in order to pass notifications up to the user. For example, if Twitter refreshes in another window and you’re watching a YouTube video, a popup will show and tell you you have something else going on. The APIs will be available at launch, but it’s up to websites to support them.
How good is it?
Despite its weird birth issues this past week with all the Arrington trouble, the JooJoo is surprisingly solid. You can tell Fusion Garage spent a good deal of time polishing the hardware, by the fact that they managed to include a 12-inch screen that’s decent enough to not have lousy viewing angles, plus support 1080p HD video playback.
The only trouble right now is software, which is only about 75% done. Fusion Garage plans to ship devices about 8-10 weeks after preorders, which start this friday. If FG can manage to finish the software and get it to a point where it’s transparent to the user who just wants to get online, $500 isn’t too outrageous a price to pay. Decent netbooks are around that price, and it’s about the price you’d expect Apple to charge for their tablet, if not even more. We’d of course be very happy if it were down at $300 or $400, but it’s basically a new device in a new market, and you’ll have to hand over a little extra for being an early adopter.
So right now we’re at a wait and see status. The JooJoo seems good, from our time with it, but it really needs to be taken home and thoroughly tested with different webapps, watching a lot of HD video and streaming music. At the very least, we’ll see how much of that 5-hour battery life stands up to constant use. You can pre-order it yourself this Friday, but, since there’s some legal troubles on the horizon, you probably want to wait until the whole thing clears up first before putting any money down. [JooJoo]
What if you took an original Adamo, shaved a couple pounds off the weight and a grand off the price? You’d end up with something pretty close to the new Dell Vostro V13. We just got a quick look at the machine, and while some of the cheaper materials Dell is using here certainly came through, the total package is still quite impressive — and the price unimpeachable. The anodized aluminum exterior is smooth to the touch and gives the frame of the entire laptop a great amount of stiffness; none of that bendy nonsense that can be found in some of the $500ish thin-and-light competition. We were also pleasantly surprised to find a antigloss (not quite matte) display under the hood. Unfortunately, the compromises begin with the keyboard, which is a bit bendy and “clacky” (the bad version of “clicky”), and the 6 volt battery gets 4.75 hours as quoted, so probably around three in real life. We’re also a little disappointed that the $450 base price rips out the SD card and ExpressCard slots, and that you can’t get a Windows 7 version for under $600 — even though the Ubuntu default is mighty tempting. So, there are compromises, just like in life, but for the most part this is one of the least timid computers we’ve seen from Dell in a while: not afraid to step on the toes of its brandmates and make a name for itself. Check out a quick video hands-on after the break, and stand by for our review that should hopefully arrive later this month.
Update: We got some bad info, and it turns out that the ExpressCard and SD card slots do come standard with the laptop — the mockup we saw didn’t have them, but all shipping models will. Phew!
Marked more by its story than its design, the Joojoo tablet is somewhat of a mythical (and controversial) beast. So when we got a phone call to see it for ourselves with Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan, we jumped at the opportunity. Turns out it’s quite a capable little device, and chief among its feats so far seems to be smooth 1080p YouTube playback. Seriously, we were quite impressed with just how crisp and lag-free it was, at least for the Avatar trailer we tested. Throw in a Webkit-based browser with Silverlight and Flash support (why hello there, Hulu), and yeah, we’re pretty pumped. Read on for more impressions.
As you take a 30-second tour of your local AT&T store this month, the iPAQ Glisten from HP isn’t likely to catch your eye; it’s just another QWERTY smartphone without much curb appeal, after all. If you take a step back, though, this unassuming piece of gadgetry is actually quite interesting on a number of levels: it’s just the third device to launch on AT&T with Windows Mobile 6.5 out of the box (though the Jack has been upgraded since it hit the market), it’s got an AMOLED display, it features the exceedingly rare portrait-QWERTY-plus-touchscreen form factor, and — this is a big one — it apparently once again proves that HP hasn’t abandoned the handset market altogether. Sound like a winning formula to you? Read on for our quick take on the Glisten’s ups, downs, and… sideways-es.
The projector phone mishmash idea has been around (and even demonstrated) for quite some time now, but only recently have we seen one of these two-pronged, hunchbacked monsters land on a major US carrier. LG’s eXpo is carrying that crown (or burden, depending on perspective), and while we’re itching to get one into our own labs for testing, we’ll happily pass along what looks to be the world’s first real good look at this handset in action. Make no mistake — the DLP-based beamer affixed on the back adds quite the bulge, but the actual video performance looks about as good as any dedicated pico projector that we’ve seen to date. Have a peek past the break to see for yourself.
Previous reviews haven’t been all smiles, but we’re finally able to pick up Nikon’s Coolpix S70 and see for ourselves. On form factor alone, it’s a pretty alluring build — even the faux leather front is tastefully done. While the tap-to-focus feature is a nice addition, we’re less enthused about the OLED screen’s viewing angles when outside — and seeing as we’ve go no other way to see the memories we’re framing, that’s pretty disappointing. We’re still putting it through its paces before we dole out full impressions, but in the meantime, enjoy our unboxing and hands-on photos.
Thanks to a very generous anonymous tipster, we’ve gotten a number of hands-on pics of Barnes & Noble‘s soon to be released (for some) Nook e-reader. The impressions we’ve been given, however, weave a tale of a laggy Android interface, which sounds like what we noticed with the first introduction video. Other fun facts include in-store WiFi browsing coming in 2010, and an important clarification that cover-to-cover book browsing over BN’s network only works for an hour at a time, not unlimited. We’re itching to get our own hands on it, but in the meantime, gloss over these gracious pics. Excerpts from the tipster after the break.
The first time we saw a pico projector some of us thought: “Err… What’s the point?” Slide show presentations from your phone? Doubt it — not powerful enough for practical use. Cinematic experience in the toilet? Maybe, but you’d want a built-in projector on your PMP instead of a separate brick. Funky dance? Only in Japan. Finally, WowWee took a break from robotics to give us the answer with its foldable Cinemin Swivel pico projector: for watching videos on the ceiling while lying in bed, obviously. Still, we have our doubts about image quality, portability and practicality — especially for $299. Read on to find out if this little guy is worth it.
The Case Logic Soft-sided Messeger Bag ($49.95 direct, for laptops up to 16 inches) is the coziest case I’ve come across. With its softly padded polyester exterior, it looks and feels like a sleeping bag or a down jacket; you could use it as a pillow, if you stuffed it with a t-shirt or two instead of a laptop.
I did use it as a laptop case, though, and it does the job. This bag is obviously not as protective as a hard-sided case, but it makes a nice-looking, light day bag; a separate sleeve of the same material is also included for extra padding for your laptop.
The messenger has one large exterior pocket and two interior compartments; you won’t fit a huge amount of extras into this bag, but that keeps it extra-portable. I love the bright orange with gray of the bag that I used, but it also comes in brown-blue and gray-pink colorways. And it comes with–really–a 25-year warranty.
Case Logic also offers a netbook sleeve that’s covered in gray cable knit, just like your dad’s sweater; check it out after the jump.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
