Hasta La Gadget!

Little fingers can dish out big pain for gadgets, and unless your little one is beefy enough to lug around a Toughbook you’ll be wanting something small and durable for them. Enter the $449 PeeWee Power 2.0, the latest revision to the company’s series of kid-friendly computers. This netbook is said to survive drops with aplomb, but only has a “water resistant” keyboard, so don’t toss those sippy cups just yet. It also comes loaded with security software to hopefully keep your kids from finding the worst the ‘net has to offer, but with only a 1.6GHz N270 Atom processor on tap, 1GB of RAM, and a mere 30GB of HDD storage, we’re guessing it could also be a good tool to teach them all about patience.

Continue reading PeeWee PC netbook moves to 2.0, rated to take the worst your tot can deliver

PeeWee PC netbook moves to 2.0, rated to take the worst your tot can deliver originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 14:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When’s the last time you said “Crank up the netbook, I love this song!” Yeah, probably never, but if you had a Toshiba mini NB520 you might — or at least that’s what Toshiba would like to envision you would do. It packs stereo Harman Kardon speakers that can crack the foundation and wake the dead with an amazing two watts each, apparently the smallest tweeters H/K has ever put on a laptop. That’s paired with an Atom N550 processor, 2GB of DDR3 memory, a 250GB HDD, 10 hours of battery life, and a 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 LED-backlit display. If that’s too loud or you’re too old, there’s also the “no frills” NB500, offering the same specs but minus the petite sound system and stepping down to an Atom N455, though doing so at a lower price. What price? That we don’t know, but we’ll find out when both ship in the first quarter of 2011, which starts in a month. Yikes.

Continue reading Toshiba launches NB520 and NB500 netbooks, one with Harman Kardon sound, one without

Toshiba launches NB520 and NB500 netbooks, one with Harman Kardon sound, one without originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 08:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel’s Core i7-2630QM chip has made the leap from the company’s roadmap onto its first spec sheet, courtesy of HP’s dv7. We’ve come across a provisional component list for an update to HP’s gaming laptop, which includes the 2GHz quad-core CPU as the star of its show. Now, of course, neither HP nor Intel has said anything official on the matter, but Laptoping has also been snooping around and found listings at online retailers for laptops from Gateway and Lenovo also offering the still unannounced part. It’s not exactly a secret that Intel intends to blow the bloody doors off CES 2011 with its Sandy Bridge processor line, but it’s reassuring to see vendors looking eager and ready so far in advance of the launch date — it should mean no shortage of choice when Paul Otellini finally steps to the stage and makes things officially official.

Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPUs start to seep out, 2GHz quad-core i7-2630QM coming to HP dv7 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Nov 2010 15:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh, China, how we love your shameless knockoffs. And we love them all the more when they come as well-specced as this one, an almost identical iPad clone which runs Windows 7, Linux, Android, or Google’s Chromium OS.

Here’s the laundry list for the Haleron Tablet, with the most surprising parts first. The display is a 9-7-inch, 1024 x 768 IPS LED backlit capacitive touch-screen, which sounds a lot like the iPad’s. It also packs a 16GB SSD, and runs on an Intel Z550 Dual Threading 2GHZ processor in a US15W chipset, which supports 3D and hi-def hardware video acceleration.

There’s also VGA DVI and HDMI out, 3G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, an accelerometer, four USB-ports and finally a 0.3 megapixel camera.

I know what you’re thinking. That picture, which first looked like an amazing iPad clone is now looking more like a real iPad with a Windows 7 screen Photoshopped onto it. It seems impossible that all of that hardware could fit into an iPad-sized shell and still leave space for a battery (4500-mAh, if you’re asking). Add to that the power requirement of a 36-watt AC adapter, and this looks more like a netbook with a fake mugshot than a real iPad competitor. But then you see the screws and other tiny differences and realize it might actually be real.

Still, we’ll see when these start shipping in December (the site is for wholesale orders), and I remain hopeful for one reason: the weight is listed as just 708g, making it a shade lighter than the 3G iPad.

Haleron 9.7-inch Multi Touch Tablet [Haleron via Netbook News]

See Also:

• Sony Wants to Build an iPad Clone
• Hot Out of China's Knock-Off Oven: iPad Clones
• Clones
• How to Make an iPad-Beating Tablet

Love application launchers? Application switching? Open source software running on non-commercial hardware? You’re going to love this video. MeeGo 1.1 has been spotted on Aava-built, Intel Moorestown-powered hardware. It appears, in fact, to be that Virta 2 smartphone development kit of theirs (which already managed MeeGo 1 just fine), thought it’s a little hard to tell in the dim lighting the MeeGo event coordinators chose to set the mood for Linux love. Not a ton of the OS is shown off in the video above, but there are some nice transitions and smooth scrolling. That Firefox load time has miles to go, however. Mainly we’re just excited to see something that isn’t ARM running a next-gen smartphone OS (no offense, ARM), and we’re looking forward to seeing where MeeGo lands on the Android / webOS / guy-in-garage continuum of Linux-based smartphones.

MeeGo 1.1 spotted running on Moorestown hardware, blowing minds originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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