Hasta La Gadget!

Salarymen, get those contactless employee IDs set to swipe. Panasonic’s throwing your overcaffeinated ilk a bone with two Honeycomb-based enterprise slates for release this winter. Coming under the BizPad umbrella, these 7- and 10.1-inch Android 3.2 tablets are ruggedized for the road warrior treatment, offering the clumsy and sleep-deprived alike dust-, drop- and water-proof protection. Both tabs pack a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, 16GB of onboard storage, 1GB RAM, WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC capability (via its IC card reader), but the shared specs end there. While the larger tab certainly wins out with its higher resolution, digitizer-friendly WXGA 1280 x 800 IPS capacitive display (vs. WSVGA 1024 x 600 resistive LCD display), the more diminutive of the bunch gets the better 5 megapixel camera (vs. 1.3 megapixel) and optional 3G connectivity. No word yet on pricing or an actual launch date, but don’t let that stop you from petitioning your IT department right now.

Panasonic’s 7- and 10-inch BizPads port the Honeycomb drizzle to Japan’s enterprise set originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Oct 2011 01:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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America’s armed forces have added some major tech to their arsenal lately, from smartphones for soldiers to giant surveillance blimps. And now, AAI has unveiled a new tool for battlefield commanders in the form of giant touchscreen tablet. Its screen is three feet by two feet and employs surveillance information to give those in charge an overhead view of a war zone that shows the position of both good guys and bad. Icons represent troops, air support, and spy drones, which are then deployed by tapping and dragging them on the touchscreen. Such input doesn’t actually control battlefield assets, but it does send orders to the appropriate personnel so they can be executed, and soldiers confirm receipt of the order via instant message. The company’s still trying to sell the system to the Army, but we’d imagine that such drag and drop warfare will appeal to Uncle Sam. Who knows, perhaps all those hours spent honing your Starcraft skills can soon be put to good use defending the country.

[Image credit: Spencer Ackerman]

Giant tablet lets commanders control war with the swipe of a finger originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As far as tablets go, a couple of interesting things are going to happen between now and the holiday season. One, we’re going to see a glut of smaller 7- and 8-inch tablets running Honeycomb (like this, this and this) hit the market. And if the Kindle Fire and Acer Iconia Tab A100 are any indication, they’re going to be cheaper, making slates palatable to folks who previously couldn’t bring themselves to spend $500 on a plaything. The Archos 80 G9, then, is the perfect specimen on both counts. Here you have an 8-inch tablet running Android 3.2 with a kickstand and full-sized USB port — costing just $300 for the base model ($270, even, on sites like Amazon). So how does it stack up against other diminutive, aggressively priced tablets? Let’s see.

Continue reading Archos 80 G9 review

Archos 80 G9 review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After popping up at IFA, and teasing us with the whole ‘pre-sale’ thing, the Archos 101 G9 is finally ready to empty your wallet. We’ve only seen it on the company’s store so far, where the base model’s available now bearing a $370 price tag, with no sign of the 250GB variant yet. For your cash you get Android 3.2, a 1.0GHz dual core processor, and even HDMI out for those times when the 10.1 inch screen just isn’t big enough. Still not sure if the Archos slab’s for you? Try checking out our hands-on to see if this slate with the French flair is worth your hard earned cash, and head on down to the source link if the answer is oui.

[Thanks to OneLove]

Archos 101 G9 tablet goes on sale, 8GB version now $370 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lots of us spend the summer by the pool, sipping Mai Tais and working on our tans, but Adam Duran had better things to do with his vacation. Instead of engaging in such lethargy, Duran attended the Army High Performance Computing Research Center’s summer course held at Stanford, where he and his mentors, Sohan Dharmaraja and Adrian Lew, developed a Braille writer app for tablets. You see, the average 8-key Braille writer is a custom laptop that costs $6,000, so given the paltry pricing on today’s slates, this new solution is considerably more economical. Users place their fingertips on the display and the app populates keys underneath them, rendering tactile indicators of the keys’ location unnecessary. Plus, the virtual keyboard provides a custom fit for your phalanges no matter how big or small they may be. The project has some “technical and legal hurdles to address” before it’s made available to the masses, but here’s hoping they can clear them soon. Video of the app in action after the break.

Continue reading Student spends summer turning a tablet into a Braille writer, says mowing lawns is for chumps

Student spends summer turning a tablet into a Braille writer, says mowing lawns is for chumps originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Oct 2011 22:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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