Hasta La Gadget!

Wondering where your HP Slate has been all these weeks since you ordered it? Well, at least one of those precious Windows 7 tablets has taken a little detour from its supposedly enterprise-centric destiny to make a cameo appearance… as a dashboard infotainment system. HP, in its inimitable wisdom, has decided to grace the opening of its Vancouver store last month with a customized GMC Yukon Denali truck, which is where we find the company’s Slate casually showing off its Acrobat Reader and other big boy OS advantages. We wouldn’t really say embedding the Slate into your dash is the worst idea in the world, though the rest of the characterful customizations to this Denali just might be.

[Thanks, lmwong]

Continue reading Visualized: the HP Slate’s new job

Visualized: the HP Slate’s new job originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Jan 2011 08:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen the Kindle DX fail as a textbook alternative, but the iPad marches ever onward as a pioneer of wireless education. Or so it seems, anyway. This time the tablet has set its sights on a private school in Knoxville, TN, where all students from fourth to 12th grade will be required to carry iPads starting this August. Webb School students can either provide their own slate or lease a WiFi-only model for $20 a month. Just like administrators at Seton Hill University, the folks at Webb School see the iPad as an eventual replacement for traditional textbooks, as well as a tool for interactive learning. We’ve voiced our skepticism about the in-school iPad trend before, and while we still wonder just how effective the devices might be in the classroom, we’re interested to see how this thing turns out. You know, we love the Oregon Trail and everything, but don’t today’s students deserve to see more than pixelated trailblazers dying of digital diphtheria?

[Thanks, Jordan]

Tennessee’s Webb School makes iPads mandatory, still looks down on note-passing originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If we were running Microsoft, we’d stop trying to pigeonhole the iPad and focus instead on reversing Apple’s domination of the burgeoning tablet market. Alas, for better or worse, we’re not the ones in charge, so all we can do is cringe at the news that Microsoft has put together a marketing campaign for its reseller partners that highlights the iPad’s enterprise shortcomings. Yes, the device that was patently designed for consumer-centric accessibility is being tarred with the damning brush of being unfriendly to business. The thing is, business customers are indeed deploying iPads in their workplaces, but we’re pretty sure none of them are throwing out the ThinkPads in the process, which kinda makes Microsoft’s furrowed brows and highfalutin concerns — such as the lack of enterprise OS patch management tools — seem, well, disconnected from reality. Still, we know trash talk when we see it and there’s a whole ten slides of the stuff at the source link below.

Microsoft’s answer to the iPad: attack its enterprise weaknesses… even if nobody cares about them originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 19:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like those whispers we heard about HP’s Topaz having a 1.2GHz Qualcomm CPU were true. The folks over at Pre Central just scored an internal document detailing presumed specifications of HP’s forthcoming 9.7-inch tablet, and it looks like the aforesaid CPU will be joined by an integrated Adreno 220 GPU, 512MB of DDR2 memory, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, a front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera and dual-band 802.11b/g/n WiFi. We’re told to expect an oleophobic Gorilla Glass screen with a standard XGA (1024 x 768) resolution, options for 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of storage, optional WWAN, an accelerometer, gyroscope, light sensor, microphone and a battery that’ll last for around eight hours in ideal circumstances. Naturally, webOS will be onboard, and we’re hearing that a WiFi-only model will indeed hit the market at some point. As for the connected versions? HSPA, LTE and CDMA variants are rumored, with the former two likely to be SIM-locked while all three carry A-GPS.

It should be noted that these documents were apparently fresh as of last fall, so everything is clearly subject to change. That said, we’re digging the reports that HP will be doing everything it can to fully support Flash on this here slate, and it may also consider a partnership with Blio for the digital bookworms in attendance. Naturally, cloud services is shaping up to be a huge deal, and it’ll definitely support inductive charging via the Touchstone v2. These docs also affirm what we’d heard about integrated Beats Audio technology and Tap to Share, with the second-gen Touchstone to also handle wireless picture sharing, cordless audio streaming and tether-free video beaming (just to name a few). Hit the source link the full skinny, and feel free to pressure HP to move February 9th a little closer to today.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

HP / Palm’s 9.7-inch Topaz tablet to use 1.2GHz Qualcomm MSM8660, Adreno 220 GPU originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh LG, did you really think you could slip an entire tablet past the eagle-eyed gadget obsessives of Korea? The G-Slate has been one of the more mysterious devices launched at CES this year, but it now appears to have shaken off some of its shyness and made a cameo appearance on K-Pop star Seungri’s latest music vid. Our Korean correspondents inform us that Seungri’s band Big Bang has had a relationship with LG since the introduction of the cheap and cheerful Lollipop handset (video evidence after the break), so it’s not unreasonable to believe this young chap has an inside line on LG’s upcoming hardware. His video shows an LG-branded slate at 0.53 and 1.52, and although we get only brief glimpses, one of them suggests a dual-camera array on the back, which seemingly corroborates earlier rumors of the G-Slate bringing some 3D voodoo to the market. Skip the break and see for yourself.

[Thanks, Alan Yi]

Continue reading LG G-Slate spotted in Korean music video, 3D cameras and all?

LG G-Slate spotted in Korean music video, 3D cameras and all? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 23 Jan 2011 03:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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