Hasta La Gadget!

For over a month, we’ve held onto a document — allegedly a Staples tablet guide — that’s been looking increasingly wrong as the days fly by. Tablet release dates were too soon, and prices were far too high, which made us think it was either a forgery or sorely out of date. (Curious? See our copy after the break.) This week, however, Droid-Life published a far more likely looking copy of the very same thing, which appears to be both quite recent and fairly interesting. You’ll see that Samsung’s 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab makes a cameo, as does the 7-inch HP Opal we told you about early this year, and both the BlackBerry PlayBook and Dell Streak 7’s appearances align with recent rumors we’ve seen. The only outlier is an April release date for the Motorola Xoom WiFi, which ads peg for March 27th. The rest is practically a who’s who of upcoming tablets, so we’ll spare you the full churn of the rumor mill. If you want to know what we know about the lot, simply refer to our coverage below.

Update: Oh, and that HTC tablet is listed as a 10-inch one — could it be the EVO View we’ve been waiting for? [Thanks, Morgan]

Read – Dell Streak 10
Read – Acer Iconia Tab
Read – Toshiba’s unnamed Tegra 2 / Honeycomb tablet
Read – HP TouchPad

[Thanks, Billy F.]

Continue reading Staples’ slate of slates leaks out, corroborates Samsung 8.9-incher and the HP Opal?

Staples’ slate of slates leaks out, corroborates Samsung 8.9-incher and the HP Opal? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We may have to wait until summer to purchase a webOS slate, but it won’t be summer’s end — PreCentral reports that the company has confirmed a June release date for the HP TouchPad. At the enterprise-oriented HP Summit in San Francisco, CEO Leo Apotheker finally offered the month of release, and also reportedly said that the company’s full-force webOS on PC initiative will begin in a humble way — the beta will run in a web browser, and we’ll see it by the end of the year.

HP TouchPad coming June, webOS for PC beta by year’s end originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So, an update. Er, a refresher if you will. Back in September of last year, TiVo announced that ingrained Hulu Plus access would be coming to its DVRs “in the coming months,” but we’ve heard precisely nothing on the matter ever since. Enter the present. We’ve got a tipster who owns a TiVo Premiere and was just invited to join a Field Trial to “test Hulu Plus on TiVo,” and he’s also receiving codes to receive a free month of service. It’s hard to say what kind of gap we’re looking at between the testing period and the go-live period, but at least we’ve got a little assurance that no one simply forgot about their promise. In related news, other tipsters are starting to receive some fairly interesting surveys from TiVo itself, with a few questions in particular asking consumers how they’d feel about the option to “stream live TV, DVR recordings and TV shows from a cable company’s On Demand library to one’s iPad.” This seemingly includes in-home and remote streaming, and we have to say — streaming to the tablet just might be the magic feature that finally gets TiVo out of the hurt locker. Probably not, but are you really going to judge us for being blindly optimistic?

Hulu Plus on TiVo apparently being tested, live streaming to iPad apparently being considered originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 08:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

At the launch of the new iPad – superior for video chat, group presentations, and cutting cake — Apple didn’t miss a few opportunities to rub salt in the open air vents of Microsoft’s tablet efforts. Apple noted that sales of the iPad have exceeded those of every other tablet PC ever sold, and that Microsoft (along with other competitors) were chasing doomed strategies that extended outmoded models.

Microsoft has been clear that it will continue to use its “desktop” operating system – Windows – rather than its mobile operating system – the device-specifying Windows Phone 7 – as its operating system for tablets. Considering the critical importance of an intuitive touchscreen UI on tablet — where Windows Phone 7 excels and desktop Windows has struggled — this seems risky on its face. But it is important to remember from Microsoft’s perspective that the question is not whether Windows is the best choice for tablets but whether it is a better choice for Microsoft than Windows Phone. While the company faces an uphill battle regardless of which OS it chooses, its flagship could be the better answer for several reasons.

Continue reading Switched On: Padded Windows

Switched On: Padded Windows originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Mar 2011 19:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve caught wind of many whispers about a Windows designed specifically for tablets, but the latest scuttlebutt states we won’t get to add them to our mobile arsenal anytime soon — Bloomberg‘s anonymous sources report that Microsoft won’t release a tablet operating system until the 2012 back-to-school season, and will only begin to publically test the OS at the end of this year. That suggests not only a timeframe, but also a likely plan — it’s not hard to imagine Microsoft would enjoy a slice of the educational market before iPads replace textbooks entirely at schools with cash to burn. Of course, Dell seems to think there’ll be a Windows 8 slate in January of next year.

Microsoft tablet OS not coming until fall 2012? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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