Hasta La Gadget!

A lot of companies — including heavyweights like Microsoft — believe that motion control is the future of the human-machine interface. But it’s an awful lot of work to wave your hands around every time you want to change windows, isn’t it? Swedish firm Tobii, which specializes in eye control, teamed up with Lenovo to craft a run of 20 prototype Windows 7 laptops with eye control sensors built-in, and we had a chance to check out the setup here at CeBIT today.

The verdict? It works extraordinarily well — Tobii clearly knows what it’s doing, because even with our sloppy calibration at the start of the session, the system still detected where we were looking with pinpoint precision. One demo the company had set up was an Expose-style layout of all open windows, and we were able to target the smallest of the bunch (Calculator in this case) consistently and naturally — we never felt like we were “staring” to make something happen. Clearly this is a capability that’ll require some UX thought and research, because you don’t want the computer to just start doing things as you look around; most of the eye-controlled capabilities they’d baked into the laptop here were triggered with a key command, though one feature we really liked — a quick bar to access frequently-used media — was pulled up just by looking beyond the left side of the screen. It also worked very well and never came up when we didn’t want it to. The level of precision was further verified with a simple game they’ve created where you blow up asteroids before they impact Earth just by looking at them; the smallest rocks were only a few pixels wide, and we could consistently blast ’em.

As for commercialization, they’re still a ways off — they’re thinking two years if they can team up with the right partner. Tobii says that there’s a trade-off between sensor size and accuracy; the prototype has a sizable hump on the back and a roughly inch-wide strip running directly below the display, both of which are pretty impractical for a truly portable machine. The sensor must be below the display, we’re told, though it could be made quite a bit thinner — no wider than the bezel you’ve got below your notebook’s current display. Follow the break for a full video demo!

Continue reading Tobii and Lenovo show off prototype eye-controlled laptop, we go eyes-on (video)

Tobii and Lenovo show off prototype eye-controlled laptop, we go eyes-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 05:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We can totally picture how this went down: AT&T appears to have made it not worth LetsTalk’s time (or Wirefly’s time) to sell its phones anymore, which means they’re parting ways staring next month. LetsTalk — wishing to end its AT&T relationship in the most spectacular fashion imaginable — has elected to sell the Motorola Atrix 4G / Laptop Dock bundle for $250 on contract after rebates, essentially half of what you’ll pay through AT&T directly (LetsTalk runs Walmart’s wireless store portal, which we’ve linked). The fire sale might not fix some of the dock’s flaws… but it certainly makes them a little less painful.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

LetsTalk goes out in a blaze of glory, sells Atrix 4G and Laptop Dock bundle for $250 as AT&T partnership ends originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today, on Steve Jobs’ birthday, Apple updated its MacBook Pro line with much faster models. But you probably already guessed that. Unsurprisingly, they’ve now got an Intel Light Peak port (renamed as Thunderbolt), which can transfer data at 10Gb/s. Plus, a new HD camera for FaceTime, which costs $1 from the Mac App Store. More »

Come on, you knew this was coming! Oh yes, Apple’s pulling the curtain off its new MacBook Pro family, and compared to the last refresh cycle, there are a serious amount of updates. Just as we had heard, all three will be getting new Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7 processors, AMD Radeon HD 6000M graphics (bye bye, NVIDIA!), FaceTime HD cameras, and some super fast Thunderbolt I/O transfer speeds. There are two new 13-inchers, two 15.4-inch versions, and one lone 17-inch model. How much will they cost you and what are the exact specs? You’ll want to hit the jump for all of that and the official press release.

Continue reading Apple refreshes MacBook Pros with Sandy Bridge processors, AMD graphics, Thunderbolt I/O tech, and HD cameras

Apple refreshes MacBook Pros with Sandy Bridge processors, AMD graphics, Thunderbolt I/O tech, and HD cameras originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Feb 2011 09:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We were crestfallen to discover that our review unit of the Laptop Dock for Moto’s Atrix 4G didn’t have multitouch capability, making scrolling a rather old-fashioned affair — and considering that a desktop build of Firefox figures prominently into Webtop’s capabilities, scrolling is something you’ll be doing quite a bit of. Well, this is where it gets weird: a number of people on xda-developers are discussing the fact that in-store demo units of the Laptop Dock seem to mysteriously have multitouch added in, and at least one poster notes that a Motorola rep that visited his local store a while back had multitouch working as well. That means one of three things: either these units are physically different hardware, they’re running a prerelease firmware upgrade, or they’ve got a feature that was pulled at the last minute, possibly because it didn’t work very well. Unfortunately, the latter seems plausible because Motorola has indicated to us that the Laptop Dock’s hardware doesn’t support multitouch and it’s not something we can expect to be added in down the road — but we can hope.

[Thanks, Caleb]

Motorola Atrix 4G Laptop Dock demo units have multitouch trackpads — but yours doesn’t originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Feb 2011 11:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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