LBook have been quietly selling ebook devices for a while now, but the company is hoping to make a splash into the multitouch tablet market next year with their T9. The LBook T9 is an Intel Atom-based 8.9-inch slate running Windows 7, and is tipped to arrive in March 2010 with a price tag in the $350 to $375 region. If they can pull that off, it’s an excellent price for a 12.7mm-thick sofa surfer.
It’s been a few days since the last good Apple Tablet rumor, so what better way to celebrate the start of a new week than a blast through the annuls. The NYT, in the absence of any hard evidence, instead rehashes the story so far, though does at least drop in a few choice quotes from an ex-Apple engineer claiming the company has been working on the Tablet project since 2003.
It’s hard to believe it is October already and the leaves are already falling off the trees. Another week come and gone and today I am back with another week in review for your perusal. We found out early this week that the Palm Pre is still headed to Verizon according to an insider. The alleged insider didn’t give any word on when exactly this may happen.
Apple’s multitouch patent trail continues, with the latest application to come to light describing a full multitouch-sensitive surface that could track not only finger but palm contact, work as a keyboard and also recognize complex gestures and manipulations. Filed in June 2009, the patent describes a touchscreen capable of permitting “unprecedented integration of typing, resting, pointing, scrolling, 3D manipulation, and handwriting into a versatile, ergonomic computer input device”.
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If eviGroup's intentions appeal but their Wallet MID's 5-inch WVGA display simply isn't enough for your browsing needs, hold on for their second device. According to an insider, the French company's second-gen tablet will not only have a larger touchscreen display but switch out the Wallet's ARM11 processor for an Intel Atom CPU.
It’s not all Microsoft’s Courier grabbing tablet headlines today; Apple’s touchscreen tablet is also making waves, with iLounge claiming to have more insider news on the upcoming device. According to their sources, there have been three separate prototypes of the device they’re calling the “iPad”, starting with a 7-inch display which was then junked for a larger, 10.7-inch capacitive touchscreen running at around 720p resolution.
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After the second leak of Microsoft's Courier dual-touchscreen tablet, ZDNet's Mary-Jo Foley has stepped in with some leaked information of her own. It looks as though our suggestion that the origins (and intentions) of Courier lie in Microsoft OneNote was accurate, with Foley's source saying "The concept started as a software idea on how one would really build OneNote from scratch if you could for the Tablet form factor. That then morphed into building a tablet. If you look at the most successful pocket computer today - it is still the Franklin Covey Planning Products, the idea was how do you create a digital planner."
A second video and more details on Microsoft’s Courier notebook-tablet project have arrived, again courtesy of Gizmodo’s sources, and in spite of the shift toward finger-entry of text seen in smartphones over recent years, it looks as though Microsoft are pushing forward with pen-input. At Courier’s heart is the “infinite journal”, an ongoing – and thankfully searchable – document that can be used to collect together snippets of text, diagrams, webpages and more, and that integrates with a PIM and contacts system.
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With Windows 7 fast approaching and Android development growing, we’ve seen more compact touchscreen MIDs and tablets arriving on the scene every week. Still, it’s pretty unusual to see Windows Mobile running on anything larger than 5-inches, so we’re mildly surprised to see C-motech’s Mangrove 7-inch tablet, running Windows Mobile 6.5 on a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU.
Is there room in your cold, dark heart for a basic multitouch slate running Windows 7? Hanvon sure hopes so, with the Chinese manufacturer showing off just such a prototype at the IDF 2009 expo last week. GottaBeMobile’s Xavier was on hand to have a brief play, and he reckons the 8.9-inch Atom-based slate feels pretty good.
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