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Google has more than emphasized that its Chrome operating system will be super speedy; it will boot in only seven seconds and surfing the web will be just be quicker. The irony is that you will actually have to wait for Google’s OS to arrive and for a pretty long time in the technology world.  After giving a preview yesterday of what is in store from the Internet giant’s computing platform, Google’s Sundar Pichai said that they are “a year away” from releasing products with the operating system. Yep, we are going to be waiting for a solid 365 days!

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This past week I was at the opening of Apple’s latest store in NYC. It’s a work of art with a forty five foot glass wall, an all glass ceiling and marble walls. Along with that there’s the now iconic glass staircase. In many ways, it’s more a community gathering place for Apple customers and potential customers than it is a retail store. The beauty of the stores are effective but that’s not what’s ultimately driving sales. At the end of the day, the physical store is merely the visible manifestation of the Apple customer experience. Exercise if you’re Michael Dell. Build a store with a forty five foot glass wall and ceiling and see if you sell more PCs.

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As someone who has been running Windows XP as a primary operating system for the past eight years and has seen more netbooks with the dated OS in the last year or so, I was probably more excited about the arrival of Windows 7 than Twilight fans are about the upcoming release of the vampire packed New Moon movie. However, the last two netbooks I have gotten my hands on run the lower-end and feature-missing Windows 7 Starter edition. Although it pains me to admit it, I miss the rolling green mountains and blue skies of Windows XP.

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Premiumnotebooks 280x227 customI wrote this column on the Nokia Booklet 3G which is, in my opinion, the most luxurious looking netbook on the market. And for its $600 ($299 with a pretty expensive 2 year AT&T contract) it sure as heck should be. The aluminum unibody design feels as solid as a freshly pumped up tire, and its brushed metal palm rest isn’t only minimalistic but is also smooth on the hands. The plastic coated keys are soft to the touch and the higher 1280 by 720 resolution screen is sweet on the eyes. And don’t forget the built in AT&T 3G that kept me connected as I wrote in different coffee shops around New York City.

Aesthetically the Booklet has got the goods, but performance wise not so much.  While  using the Booklet for the last week or so I had to get used to the netbook taking at least a minute to boot up Windows 7 Starter (thanks to its slow 4,200 rpm hard drive), and  stalling at times when trying to open an application or simply loading a Flash video (thanks to its sluggish Atom Z530 processor). The Booklet 3G is like the stereotypical blonde — pretty but slow.

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htc hd2 slashgear hands on 3 345x500Last week, the buzz was clearly on the DROID (see my first take here) but there was another device that was also getting a lot of attention, albeit somewhat more restrained as few folks had one to work with. A few weeks ago, I wrote a column that emphasized people shouldn’t dismiss Windows Mobile. Over the last week I’ve been using the phone with the quiet buzz that proves that assertion. Sadly, it’s the best Windows Mobile phone that you can’t buy in the US yet. What device am I talking about? None other than the HTC HD2.

The HD2 is marked by two features not usually found on most Windows Mobile phones. The first is a capacitive touch screen. This is the first Windows Mobile device that has no stylus and is totally designed for input by touch alone. The second is a 1GHz Snapdragon processor that makes Windows Mobile and especially the HTC Sense UI fly. Finally, add in a gorgeous 4.3″ screen and you realize this is not your father’s Windows Mobile device.

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It looks like Dell is planning to release a mobile internet device, or a MID. The details are few and far between but the product—code-named Streak—looks like it packs Wi-Fi, 3G and Android 2.0 all into one. It is exactly what Intel has been calling a mobile internet device for the past few years: larger than a smartphone, primarily for accessing the Net, and featuring multimedia and even GPS functionality. The Archos 5 Internet Tablet and the leaked video of the Dell device gives us a better glimpse of what is to come and what it can do. Ironically (and you will see why later), when I watched the video I immediately thought: ah, so Dell wants to make an iPhone with a larger 5-inch screen!

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wang 2200 540x383I had lunch recently with someone who was a recent transplant to NY from Silicon Valley. They commented on what a great thing it was to finally ditch their car for getting around as it’s a bit of a hindrance to own a car in Manhattan. I thought about this for a while afterward, mostly remembering the few years I lived in NY when I owned a car and kept it in NY. I never drove it anywhere for fear of losing the most sacred of things in NY, my parking space. As a result, it mostly sat unused except to move it from one side of the street to the other, twice a week. (I initially had dreamed of just garaging it until I discovered that for the same money, I could have gotten it three bedrooms and a 2 baths in a nice area in NJ). The key was, I had the potential of using it anytime I wanted to. Today, I live in the NJ suburbs, no more than 15 minutes from Manhattan without traffic. Ask me why, and I’ll tell you it’s to have the advantages of the suburbs but still be close to the great museums, theater and culture of NY. Of course you might want to ask me when the last time I went to one of the great museums or saw a show on Broadway. There’s an aspirational theme associated with all this. It’s not what I do. Rather what I could do.

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With the holidays fast approaching cell phone carriers are stocking up on inventory and amongst the new Motorola DROIDs, HTC Heroes, and Palm Pixies are a slightly larger, yet unfamiliar crop of devices – netbooks. AT&T is all giddy about its exclusive availability of the Nokia Booklet 3G and Sprint announced just yesterday that it will be selling the Dell Inspiron Mini 10V. Verizon already has three netbooks in its arsenal, including HP’s new powerful Mini 311. Clearly, lining up the selection isn’t a problem, but what the carriers haven’t figured out yet is that selling netbooks requires a totally different approach than selling phones. The deals and the subsidized model, in my mind, make as much sense for netbooks as building and then plowing a virtual Farmville farm!

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Some people go to the park or Starbucks to people watch, I prefer an outing to Best Buy. I love checking out all the newest gadgets and tech under one roof (more than I should even let on), but I often get distracted by watching people who seem totally confused about which PC to buy. More often than not, I see them peruse the notebooks and desktops on display and struggle to figure out the difference between, let’s say, a netbook and a full-size notebook. And when they approach a Blue Shirt, the answers I have heard can be quite comical. No kidding, it’s the size of the netbook that makes it different!?

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Recently I asked, if a DROID could take on the Death Star? Now, Motorola and Verizon, along with some help from Google launched DROID. I’ve spent the day with a device and here’s what I think so far. First, Verizon was clear that DROID is going to be a family of devices running Android, Motorola’s device will be the only one called DROID, others will be known as the DROID-XXX. DROID is the first Android 2.0 device and the Google branding points to the fact that this is stock Android. And I do mean stock Android: there are zero Verizon services on this device (with the exception of a non-branded visual voicemail app). No VCast. No nothing. One wonders if Verizon were willing to go to this length a few years ago, would the iPhone have landed on Verizon? Android 2.0 is a great update and finally is starting to feel complete. Compared to V1 Android running HTC Sense, it’s a mixed bag. HTC’s UI is lightyears ahead of stock Android in my opinion but the DROID performs so much better than any Android V1 phone I’ve used and is nearly feature complete that it’s hard to recommend a V1x device at this point.

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