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.

Permalink   |  PeeWee PC  | Email this | Comments

When Dell first demoed the Inspiron Duo and its vertically rotating screen on stage at IDF in September, our mouths nearly hit the floor. It looked like a plain old netbook until its 10.1-inch capacitive touchscreen did a magical backflip and folded down over its keyboard to morph into a tablet. It was like nothing we’d ever seen before. And we actually figured it would be the sort of system that would stay locked up in Dell’s labs, but when its specs were revealed — a dual-core Atom N550 processor, 2GB of RAM, and Broadcom Crystal HD accelerator — it became evident that the netbook / tablet hybrid was the real deal. Running Windows 7 Home Premium and Dell’s new Stage interface, the $550 netvertible has the potential to successfully straddle both the netbook and tablet world. It also has a real shot at being the perfect device for those wavering between buying a netbook and a tablet. Indeed, the Duo is filled to the brim with potential, but what’s the thing really like to use? We’ve spent the last few days with the Duo (and its Duo Audio Station) to find out, so hit the break for the official Engadget review!

Editor’s note: The review unit Dell sent us was a hardware production unit, but we were told the software was about 95 percent done. We will update this review with our impressions of the final unit when we receive it.

Continue reading Dell Inspiron Duo review

Dell Inspiron Duo review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

It’s almost time to eat turkey and then jet out to Best Buy to be trampled by mad shoppers. Oh yes, the holiday season is just about here, which according to a few posts we’ve written in the last year means that the Chrome OS netbooks should be as well. Well, it turns out that the Google OS-powered laptops aren’t going to arrive this year, or at least not in the way we thought they would. That doesn’t mean Chrome OS isn’t going to see a bit of an unveil this year, but major manufacturers, including Acer and HP, won’t have its own Chromebooks ready before 2011. How do we know? Acer’s Jim Wong told us during the company’s global press conference that Acer will be launching its netbook based on the browser operating system during the “consumer launch” of the OS next year, while Google has its own agenda and will be doing something “in December.” We didn’t get to ask if that Acer netbook is in fact the “ZGA” netbook we’ve seen popping up in bug reports, but our guess is that it will be something quite similar.

So, what does Google have brewing? You remember the Google-branded Chrome OS netbook that we heard about? Well, according to a few of our very own sources, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. We don’t have exact timing details, but we have been told by a few that Google will launch its own Chrome-book a la the Nexus One for “friends and family.” As the operating system is still in a beta or preview form, the netbook would be aimed at the development / early adopter community. Specs-wise we don’t know all that much, but we’ve heard that it will be powered by an Intel Atom Pine Trail processor and, just as Digitimes reported, that 75,000 units are being manufactured by Taiwan ODM Inventec. We should mention that the aforementioned Acer “ZGA” was said to be used internally as a “dogfood device” at Google, but we believe this Google-branded device to be entirely different. Inventec, Intel, and Google wouldn’t comment on the hardware rumor, but Google did tell us that it would “have more details to share later this year.” By our count, that leaves ’em with just about 37 days to spill the beans!

Note: The picture above is just our creative interpretation of what a Chromebook may look like — don’t come crying to us when the actual device looks a lot prettier.

Chrome OS consumer launch pushed to 2011, Google-branded Chromebook could still arrive this year originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Netbooks might no longer be the sexy must-have accessory they once were, but maybe having Jolicloud’s custom Linux-based OS on board will sway people to give this one a second look. Yes, the Jolibook that we so recently saw for the first time is about to make its retail debut, with the UK getting the first opportunity to spill some cash on it. Netbook News reports the precise levy will be £279 ($443), while the Wall Street Journal has word that the whole shebang could start as early as tomorrow. That price is, as promised, competitive, but it’s not quite cheap enough to attract buyers all by itself — Jolicloud will have to hope its OS is as good in long-term use as it’s looked in brief glimpses so far, in which case this 10.1-incher shouldn’t have much trouble justifying its cost.

Jolibook to cost £279 in the UK, could be with us tomorrow originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Netbook News  | Email this | Comments

Alright, we know AMD’s busy showing off its Atom killer, but there’s still a little life left in Intel’s netbook stalwart, which has been harnessed to its fullest in Dell’s screen-flipping Duo tablet / netbook. And the good news is that we apparently won’t have to wait too long to see that zany concoction out in the real world. Well placed sources have informed CNET that Dell intends to release the Inspiron Duo at some point next week, potentially on November 23rd, while pre-sale information should be dished out later this week, alongside Microsoft’s announcement of a new store opening. Things are moving along nice and swiftly, it would seem.

Update: And just to fan those flames of desire a little more, the Duo has shown up in Microsoft’s latest cloud computing advert. See it after the break.

Continue reading Dell Inspiron Duo tablet could be with us next week

Dell Inspiron Duo tablet could be with us next week originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 04:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  CNET  | Email this | Comments