Hasta La Gadget!

How about a minor spy story to kick-start your weekend? According to our man Sascha at netbooknews.de, a “safe source” who shall remain nameless but who most certainly has ties to Stasi (or, at the very least, owns a trench coat) has divulged some choice nuggets: The first Eee PC pre-installed with the open source OS will hit the market in October, and the company is currently considering the possibility of making this an option for all its notebooks at some point in the near future. And if that weren’t enough to stoke your dreams of an Operating System Renaissance, the company is also reportedly working “closely together” with Google to deploy the Chrome OS on its machines at some point in the not-too-distant future. All rumors and innuendo, sure, but interesting — and, as we’ve seen the company play with Moblin in the past, certainly not a shocker. As always, we’ll keep our ears to the ground, and we’ll keep you posted.

Filed under: Laptops

Eee PCs rumored to ship with Moblin in October, Chrome OS on the horizon originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Get used to seeing Sony’s new low-priced VAIO NW pop up all over the place: not only is Best Buy heavily promoting the $800 configuration as part of its Next Class campaign, but it’s a pretty great value in general — our $880 tester with Blu-ray basically has every feature you could want in a WIndows machine. We just got it unboxed and toyed around with it a little — it’s not the smallest 15.5-inch machine we’ve ever seen, but it’s not a clunker, either. There’s just… more of it to love. Unfortunately, it’s harder to love the goofy faux-wood texture that’s been baked into the plastic — it’s very much like bad 80s rec room wallpaper. If you do work up the arm strength and fashion courage to lug this thing outside, however, you’ll find that quick connectivity is greatly enhanced by Splashtop, which allows you to quickly boot to a Linux-based shell and run a browser. It’s a nice little perk, and it should help NW owners transition into the Chrome Age quite nicely — and speaking of which, Chrome is the default preinstalled browser once you boot back into Vista. Other quick notes: the screen has pretty dismal viewing angles and it’s crazy glossy, the trackpad is textured (which we love), and we have no idea why Sony can’t bother to at least properly align all the stickers on this thing — it looks a bit of a mess. That’s just sort of how it goes at this price point — if you can get past the minor flaws, though, the VAIO NW certainly has a lot to offer. Quick Slashtop video demo after the break.

Continue reading Sony VAIO NW unboxing and hands-on

Filed under: Laptops

Sony VAIO NW unboxing and hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You should be refilling that popcorn bucket right about now. While we thought the next round of the Pre / iTunes syncing fiasco would probably be something simple like Apple releasing another quick patch, Palm has stepped it up a notch by complaining to the USB Implementers Forum over what it sees is “improper use of the Vendor ID number” by the gang at Cupertino. What the company means is that when an ID is applied for, a form is signed that states:

“Unauthorized use of assigned or unassigned USB Vendor ID Numbers and associated Product ID Numbers are strictly prohibited.”

The implication here is that Palm believes Apple is violating this stature by disallowing certain Vendor IDs — namely, Palm’s — from using iTunes. So how’d Palm manage to “fix” that syncing hole Apple managed to fill? From the looks of it, by misrepresenting its own Vendor ID, so that the Pre now shows up as a iPod / mass storage device made by Apple (ID 0x05ac) as opposed to one by Palm (ID 0x083) — hence the complaint. Of course, lying about your own ID would seem to break with the aforementioned rule, too, so what we’re left here is some muddled grey area and Palm apparently being okay with fudging some data to correct what it sees is an injustice. If anyone’s curious, DVD Jon points out that the root USB Node is still identified as “Pre,” so we very likely could see another round of these shenanigans in the not-too-distant future.

Finally, now’s as good of a time as any to take a look at some of the peripheral casualties from this war of attrition. In an essay on his personal site that’s been circulating the interwebs, Marc Deslauriers outlines the pangs he and the Linux community have felt over the years trying to use iPods on the open source platform, surmising that Apple is intentionally and repeatedly seeking ways to block non-iTunes programs from syncing in any way with its devices. This story is far from over, and as ugly as it looks now, it’s probably only gonna get worse.

[Via Digg and Pre Central]

Read – Marc Deslauriers, “Goodbye Apple”
Read – Palm’s lodges complaint with USB IF
Read – USB Vendor ID application
Read – Palm Pre USB hack confirmed

Filed under: Cellphones, Software

Palm complains about Apple to USB governing body, while Pre / iTunes sync “fix” is explained originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yeah, we’ve seen our fair share of glimpses at Garmin-ASUS’ nüvifone G60, but with the Linux-based phone just weeks away from shipping over in the Far East, these last minute looks are becoming all the more tantalizing. A reviewer over in Malaysia managed to spend a bit of quality time with the handset, and while he’s still waiting for his official review unit, he managed to snag a litany of screenshots that gives us a fantastic idea of what to expect from a user interface perspective. We have to say — we kind of dig the whimsical look at a glance, but it makes us wonder just how serious of a smartphone this thing really is. With Android already out, does this UI look like it has the chops to compete? Hit the read link and let us know.

[Via GPSTracklog, thanks Rich]

Filed under: Cellphones

Garmin-ASUS nuvifone G60 spills loads of Linux-laced screenshots originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After a patently absurd amount of delays, it actually feels like the Garmin-ASUS nüvifone tandem is approaching a proper launch. Whether or not anyone actually cares anymore, however, remains to be seen. Across the sea over in Malaysia, one particularly lucky soul seems to have stumbled upon both the Linux-based nüvifone G60 and the WinMo-powered nüvifone M20, and he claims that both handsets will be shipping en masse to the region “within 30 days.” Best of all, that totally jibes with what we’ve heard directly from Garmin today, which has informed us that the smartphone will be in Singaporean stores in August, with a few other Asian nations seeing it in late July. Now, if only North Americans could look forward to the same…

Filed under: Cellphones

Garmin-ASUS nuvifone M20 and G60 shipping to Singapore in August originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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