SlashGear Week In Review - Week 36 2008
Netbooks returned to the top of the page this week, as Dell finally confirmed their first entrance to the budget ultraportable market. The specs of the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 may not be all that surprising – given both the regular leaking pre-announcement and the fact that all of these machines are pretty similar – but the brand name will likely make it the netbook to beat. In a way it's a shame, because there are far more exciting devices – such as the Raon Digital Everun Note – that, by virtue of being less well known, will struggle to make themselves heard.
The new Dell will likely be causing some sleepless nights at ASUS, who up until now have been top dog with their Eee PC. After suffering plenty of criticism for spreading the brand thin, they've even dropped the Eee name altogether for their latest luxury netbook, the N10.
The second major headline this week has come from Google's stable, in the shape of their new internet browser, Chrome. An open-source project to take on Internet Explorer, FireFox and the rest, Google are making all the right noises about "shared development" but at the end of the day this is undoubtedly their attempt to wrest the desktop from Microsoft.
Next up comes Apple, who have confirmed a special event for this coming Tuesday, September 7th, in San Francisco. The expected announcement is for new iPods, with the nano and touch being tipped for the biggest changes (and leaked information hitting the headlines almost daily). However new patent documentation this week – covering a variety of multitouch and other UI methods – once again adds fuel to the rumors of some sort of Mac Tablet. SlashGear will be at the event, running our usual Live Blog, so join us at 10am EST at http://live.slashgear.com/ to find out everything Apple announce, as they announce it.
It must be a constant source of frustration to Microsoft that their Zune doesn't inspire the same frantic rumormongery and excitement as the iPod does. The Seattle company has new versions on the way too – in fact one branch of Fry's sold a 120GB model early – but the effect just isn't the same.
CEDIA has been running this week, and there have been plenty of new projectors, TVs and other home entertainment gadgets to please. Hitachi's super-thin 50-inch plasma caught its share of headlines, as did Sony's fresh HD projectors. If you're looking for content to play on them, TiVo will happily oblige with their new HD XL DVR, boasting a whopping 1TB of storage.
Coming up over the next few days is CTIA Wireless, and we'll be bringing you the top stories both here and at our sibling sites Phone Magazine and SlashPhone.