Hasta La Gadget!

Leave it to ASUS to blast out an entire series of tablets that saturate the market in a single go. Many of these have already been mentioned, leaked, or even revealed at trade shows. But now we’ve got company president, Jerry Shen, filling in the launch details. Starting in December, ASUS will begin launching tablets in 7-, 9-, 10-, and 12-inch form factors. The 12-inch model will run Windows on an Intel chipset and be ready for purchase in January. Of interest, Shen says that Microsoft assisted in the development by making several enhancements to related technologies including touch control and the user interface. In March ASUS will launch a pair of 7 inchers (one with WiFi and the other with “3.5G” and phone functions) and another pair of 9-inch tablets (an ARM-based Tegra 2 model running Android and another Wintel tablet) with a price gap of $100. Of course, we’ve see a 10-incher around as well. That means we should see a grand total of five or six tablets from ASUS at CES in January. Fun.

ASUS lays out Armdroid and Wintel tablet plans, we already feel overwhelmed originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Oct 2010 05:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Of all the Atom-powered, Windows 7 tablets we’ve seen over the last year and a half (and boy have there been a lot!), the 11.6-inch ExoPC has been the one we’ve been waiting on. Sure, its specs are similar to the recently reviewed Tega v2 and CTL 2goPad — it’s also got a capacitive touchscreen, accelerometer, Atom Pinetrail processor and 2GB of RAM — but unlike the others the company has put some serious love into its Windows 7 software layer, which we’ve dubbed the Connect Four UI. ExoPC’s also preloaded the tablet with touch apps, built out its own app store and included a Broadcom Crystal HD accelerator to handle full 1080p video. You can clearly see why we’ve had high hopes for the ExoPC ever since we got to check it out at Computex, but does it live up to the promise and provide the more enhanced and finger-friendly Windows experience we’ve been looking for? And is the software stable and robust enough for the average consumer? We’ve spent the last week with the $599 tablet so read on to find out in our full review.

Continue reading ExoPC Slate review

ExoPC Slate review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Can you believe it’s only been a year since Windows 7 hit the market? So much has happened in the interim, we could swear it’s been a decade. Of course, Microsoft is celebrating Windows 7’s birthday the best way it knows how: sales numbers. Turns out the little OS has done pretty well for itself, with 240 million licenses sold, giving it a 17 percent global operating system market share, and making it a healthy chunk of the 1.2 billion Windows PCs out there. As for the slow-to-adopt businesses out there, Microsoft still has some work to do, but it says 90 percent of companies have upgraded or “started their move” to 7. So, we’ve got the cold hard facts out of the way, any precious, personal, heartfelt memories of your time with the OS you’d like to share? We’ve got dibs on Steve Ballmer dropping by the Engadget Show on launch week.

Windows 7 moves 240 million copies in its first year originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 11:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you happen to be enthusiastic about Lenovo, tablets, and your American residency, look away now. Lenovo still plans to ship the Android-based LePad in China some time soonish, but its US roadmap can pretty much be summed up as “wait and see.” The company’s COO Rory Read has been cited as saying there are no plans to release a slate for the US market until at least Android’s Honeycomb version comes out, agreeing with Google on the point that Froyo is not “the right base to have a fully functioning pad.” Lest you think Windows 7 will fill the void until whenever in 2011 that Android tablet does arrive, Lenovo’s director of new technology, Howard Locker, sets you straight: “Windows 7 is based on the same paradigm as 1985 — it’s really an interface that’s optimized for a mouse and keyboard,” and the Thinking machine team doesn’t intend to build a slate around it. And if you were thinking of maybe picking up a LePhone as a consolation prize, tough luck, that won’t be arriving in the US for at least another two years (which in smartphone terms is basically “never”), although it’s good to know that it’s now got 13 percent of the smartphone market in China. You know, in case you own stock in LeCompany.

Lenovo says no Android tablet in US until Honeycomb; no Windows 7 tablet, period originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 05:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last time we left off in the tale of Windows 7 tablets, we’d taken a look at Netbook Navigator’s Nav 9 slate, which by review’s end had us not only wanting to send it back as soon as humanly possible, but concluding that something better just had to be on the horizon. Well, as luck would have it, just a few days later CTL’s 10-inch 2goPad SL10 showed up on our doorstep with some very promising ingredients — a capacitive touchscreen, accelerometer, front facing camera, and a Win 7 software layer. As we said in our early hands-on, we’ve been more impressed with the $499 (it will go up to $599 in late October) 2goPad than we ever thought we would be, but ultimately its Atom N450 processor and its software stand in its way of being the Win 7 tablet to kill ’em all. You’ll want to hit the break to read all about it in our full review.

Continue reading CTL 2goPad SL10 review

CTL 2goPad SL10 review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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