If we’re honest, we were more excited about Viewsonic’s Ion-packing VOT 132 nettop than its new netbooks yesterday, but that doesn’t mean we won’t give the 10.2-inch VNB101 a chance. NetbookNews were skulking around the press conference and managed to grab some hands-on time with the 10.2-inch machine.
Video demo after the cut
If our review of Toshiba’s Portégé R600 this week tempted you into the company’s ultraportable range, but you prefer an added shot of WiMAX goodness, then you’ll be wanting to head over to Japan to pick up the company’s latest wireless-integrated model. The Japanese version of the R600, the Dynabook SS, will see its RX2/T9JMAJ WiMAX version (complete with a 128GB SSD) launch today, July 24th; Toshiba first announced the notebook back in June.
Augmented reality – integrating data from computer and internet sources with everyday life – is showing up more and more lately, as cellphones learn to geotag landmarks and webcams are coaxed into spotting special ID glyphs, but we’re still a way off from a true mainstream-commercial head-up display. MicroPCTalk forum member fiveseven808 decided to take matters into his own hands, and hacked together a wearable computer with the eyepiece from a Myvu Crystal, a Sony UMPC and a Motorola iDEN i425 for cheap, always-on connectivity.
With all the renewed talk of an Apple touchscreen MID or “Media Pad” recently, it’s about time we saw another decent mockup of what such a device might look like. Happily notorious Apple renderer Isamu Sanada has delivered just that, with what he calls the MacBook touch.
Whether you think a pico-projector is a pointless gadget or the future of mobile displays, the common criticism is that their resolution is poor compared to cellphone displays or full-sized projectors. Over at PicoProjector.info they’ve been speaking to Syndiant CTO Karl Guttag, however, and he’s promising something that could turn that all around: 1920 x 1080p resolution pico-modules.
Garmin-ASUS have announced that the long-awaited nuvifone G60 touchscreen GPS cellphone will go on sale in Taiwan on July 27th, followed by a Singaporean and Malaysian launch in August alongside the Windows Mobile-based nuvifone M20. The G60 should then arrive in Europe and the US in the second half of this year, as previously reported, while the M20 will bypass the US altogether but hit Europe, again, in 2H09.
After Amazon deleted ebook copies of George Orwell novels from users Kindle ebook readers last week, in a PR nightmare that seemed almost too good to be true for headline writers, CEO Jeff Bezos has posted an apology to customers. Describing the Amazon “solution” as “stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles”, Bezos promised that the company would use the ferocious customer feedback to make better decisions in future.
Full statement after the cut
Palm have released their latest update for Pre, webOS 1.1.0, and along with increased speed and various UI tweaks they’ve also addressed one of the more contentious issues from the past month: iTunes synchronization. After Apple seemingly purposefully blocked the Pre from using iTunes in their 8.2.1 update midway through the month, webOS 1.1.0 “resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (8.2.1).”
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iBUYPOWER has announced a new system called the Harmony Sound Reduction System or H-SRS today, which makes an aim to reduce the amount of noise your gaming PC puts out. The new tech is being offered on all their custom gaming PCs starting now.
SlashGear Japan
