Touchscreen displays are slowly making their way into the home, accelerated since Microsoft stepped up their touch functionality in Windows 7, but they’re still expensive. IDTI reckon they have a low-cost alternative, however; their 21.5-inch display responds to pen input and two-point multitouch thanks to a proprietary touch technology, but best of all they’re expecting to launch it with a $300 price tag.
Video demo after the cut
Hanvon’s BC10C (and its BA10E sibling) was a surprising stand-out from CeBIT 2010 recently, a multitouch-capable 10-inch slate running Windows 7. jkkmobile managed to bring one home from the show, and has been testing it out to see whether it’s all good news. The upside is that media performance – thanks to the 1.3GHz Celeron ULV processor – is decent; the downside is that CULV notebook style components don’t add up to extremes of battery life.
Video review after the cut
Remember Hanvon’s Windows 7 tablet slyly spotted all the way back at IDF 2009 last year? The company has brought along the latest version to CeBIT 2010 this week, and its gained a sibling too. The Hanvon BC10C and BA10E each run Windows 7, the BC10C having a 1.3GHz Celeron CPU and the BA10E using a 1.6GHz Atom Z-series CPU, and jkkmobile ended up very impressed by both tablets.
Video demo after the cut
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It's a little known fact, but Windows 7 - like OS X - has an integrated location platform and API that allows for location-aware applications, taking advantage of technologies like GPS or WiFi triangulation to position the machine. However, unlike Apple, Microsoft didn't bother to include a geolocation provider, so your fancy PC notebook - off the shelf at least - has no idea where it is. That's all changed with a new geolocation tool for Windows 7, Geosense for Windows.
HP’s four new ProBook models may not be as eye-catching as the company’s EliteBook 2740p tablet, but the notebooks do span a 13.3-inch to 17.3-inch display range and offer the latest Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors. Meanwhile pricing kicks off at $719; check out the full details and some hands-on first impressions after the cut.
HP have announced their lightest EliteBook ultraportable yet, the HP EliteBook 2540p, and while it may only tip the scales at 3.3lbs it’s still got the same MIL-STD 810G vibration, dust, humidity, altitude and temperature resilience of the 2740p tablet. Like its swivel-screen sibling, the EliteBook 2540p has a choice of Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors along with up to 8GB of DDR3 memory and various HDD/SSD storage options. Check out more details plus some hands-on first impressions after the cut.
Viliv’s S10 Blade, the company’s 10.1-inch convertible touchscreen netbook, has finally gone up for preorder. The good folk at import specialists Dynamism are listing seven SKUs of the netbook; the basic S10 Blade comes with Windows XP, a 60GB HDD and 1.6GHz Atom Z530 processor (and thus lacks OS multitouch support), but after that it’s Windows 7 all round and a choice of 32GB or 64GB SSDs.
Microsoft has evidently exterminated a Microsoft employee’s thoughts on the next version of the Windows operating system, removing a blog post that informally keeps referring to Windows.next as the next Windows 8.
Microsoft recently announced that they would investigate some user upgrades to Windows 7 that provoked a new warning message (not seen XP or even the problem-ridden Vista) suggesting that users “consider replacing their batteries”. Turns out the software giant have reached a verdict that Windows 7 (and naturally therefore Microsoft) isn’t actually at fault. Who, or rather, what is? Absymal laptop batteries, according to the MSDN blog.
Fujitsu’s latest tablet PC has quietly launched, and the Windows 7 convertible LifeBook T900 has plenty to recommend it. Packing a choice of Intel processors including the Core i7-620M and Core i5-540M/520M, the T900 has a 13.3-inch 1280 x 800 display that can either use a regular active digitizer or a dual-digitizer that both recognizes pen input and multitouch finger gestures.
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