Hanvon at CES2010

Hanvon has done some great Tablets. They are solid build and running Windows 7. The device was very speedy and was actually good in your hands, but I see more tablets in the 5" - 7" as more usable. Anything above is still portable but its not as easy to take.

Velocity Micro Cruz Tablet at Best Buy

 

If you really want to get your hands on a 7” Android Tablet. Well then head down to your nearest Best Buy store. This is providing that your local Best Buy has them in stock. I checked a few stores and they didn’t have any available. They did have a display model and decided to check it out, and see how well it compared to my Samsung Galaxy Captivate. For starters the touch screen was not that responsive, compared to my Captivate, iPad, tm2 TouchSmart, etc… At times I did have to click twice for it to launch the app. It was running Eclair, which seemed to do pretty good on the device. Didn’t seem to have a multi-touch screen.

Opening applications also had some very slight delay, but for the $299.99 price tag, you might want to try out Walgreens $99 tablet. It didn’t have the Android Market Place, but instead it has it’s own Cruz Market Place to download apps. The quality was good. It seem to have a nice sturdy housing and all plastic that was very solid. The screen appeared to be some type of plastic. They also had the Archos 7 Home Tablet next to it, so I also compared the size of the Cruz Tablet. It was not heavy at all, which would make a nice e-book reader as well. At this point you might be better to wait for the upcoming Huawei Ideos 7” tablet. From the rumors, the price will be $299.99 for the Ideos 7.

I myself, if I was thinking of getting a tablet. I would wait for the S7, but for now I really like my 3G iPad, which I use daily for work and for catching up on the latest news. I will have to check Best Buy November 7 and see if the S7 is available and give it a try if they have a display model. You never know, I might just bring one home. The 7” display makes it a perfect travel device. Not that my iPad isn’t a perfect travel device, but at times I sure could get by with a 7” device. These lower priced tablets, usually don’t have built-in GPS. I kind of got use to having a device with built-in GPS, but it wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me, since most my other devices already have GPS.

 

Here is the specs for the Cruz tablet:

Product Height 4.9"

Product Width 7.5"

Product Weight 1 lb.

Product Depth 0.7"

Platform Android

Total Built-In Memory 1GB; 4GB microSD card

Expandable Memory microSD

Modem Included Yes

PC Required No

Screen Size (Measured Diagonally) 7"

Supports Voice Transmission No

Number of Ports 1

Connection Port USB

Supports MP3 Yes

Display Type Color TFT

Keyboard Entry Yes, on display

Calculator Yes

Calendar Yes

Word Processor Yes

Adjustable Font Size Yes

Backlight Yes

Battery Type Lithium-ion

Connectivity Wi-Fi

HP Slate 500 Now Ready for Ordering

Well looks like HP has finally let the Slate out of the bag. I have been reading in many post that say, the HP Slate 500 is the real first slate to run Windows 7 and be able to buy the slate. Well if you really look back, the Archos 9 was in theory one of the first slates available with Windows 7 and you could actually buy one. The specs on the Archos 9 was not great and got no recognition from the consumers. Hopefully the HP having a Atom Z540 running at 1.86GHz processor can do better. 

The HP Slate 500 price will start at $799 and come with a portfolio case and a docking stand. What it does have for a first in a slate PC is, that it will come with a dual digitizer for both multi-touch with finger or pen input. This is great because it can be good for note taking on the small screen. This will be kind of like my HP TouchSmart tm2 that I have been using the past 3 weeks. Makes touch screen times very easy and when need to take notes, just use the pen and works great.

The 2GB of RAM and 64GB SSD, should get most users a pretty decent device for your daily work activities. Seems that HP might have basic model, that will have 1GB of RAM. With RAM prices not to expensive, HP should have just made all models with 2GB standard. It also has the Broadcom’s Crystal accelerator to handle those 1080p videos that you will want to watch on the road, or when you have a break from doing your work stuff. It also has dual VGA cam’s front and back to use with Skype or other video conference software.

Another thing is, many are going to compare the Slate 500 with the iPad. I don’t believe that you can compare both, because they are completely different devices. Yes they do basic things the same, but they are different in their own way. I use my iPad daily, but I also need my full PC at times or my Macbook Pro for those times I need some real power and be able to run both Windows 7 and Mac OS X.

 

Specifications:

• Windows 7 Pro 32bits
• Atom Z540 1.86Ghz
• up to 2GB of RAM (533Mhz bus)
• 64GB SSD storage
• 8.9" multi-touch display (1024x600)
• Broadcom video hardware accelerator
• Front (VGA) and Back (3 Megapixel) cameras
• 5.91 x 9.21 x 0.58, 1.5lbs
• 2-Cell battery (30Whr)

 

Well we will have to wait for the verdict a time goes by and the HP Slate 500 reaches the consumer to use. Right now if you place a order, HP will ship the Slate 500 starting November 13.

Acer Dual Screen i5

 

Just recently Toshiba released the libretto W100 with Dual-Screen, with 7” LCD. Now looks like Acer has its own leaked dual screen laptop. According to Tech Review Source this has a 2.67GHz i5 processor, with massive dual 15” screens. This should give you enough power for all your favorite apps. This won’t be your everyday travel companion, as the weight of this device will be up there. It has multi-touch screens so it will very nice to use.

Viliv X10

 

Looks like Viliv might have another winner in its hands. Laptop magazine got some shots of the X10 and some video of the X10 running some smooth game and video. This will be a 10” tablet with 1366x768 screen resolution. This is the same resolution on my Ferrari One F02 with 11.6” screen. So it will be nice to be able to have such a high resolution. Also they mention about the X10 having USB, SD Card, HDMI, and web cam. That alone will be better than my iPad. Also from reading it claims to have a battery life of 10 hours. Not bad again. The current X10 is running Android 2.1, but Viliv is saying that the final product will have Android 2.2 Froyo. There is also a Windows 7 version of the X10 and Laptop Magazine got some pictures. We will have to keep a eye out for this nice little tablet in the coming weeks or months. Hopefully it won’t be months. The X10 looks pretty well done as in it could be ready to mass produce if they keep the design as the demo unit. Check out the video out at Laptop Magazine.

How to Add ePub books to your iPad

 

For those that want to add your DRM free ePub books to your iPad and take them on the road to read, well it is pretty easy to do. You just have to drag over your ePub book to your iTunes library and then drag it to your iPad and it will sync the book over to your iPad and ready for on the go reading. Here is a quick video as well.

 

One BIG iPhone or maybe not?

I have loaded Skype on my iPad and it is working good. I was able to make calls to landlines, mobile phones, and regular Skype calls to desktop Skype users and all the calls came in clear. The Skype app is not yet made specific for iPad, but the regular iPhone one worked great. When you zoom in on the Skype app, it does get a little jaggy edged because its not made specific for the iPad. But never the less it does work and you can use the mic and speaker that is built-in on the iPad to make calls to your family, friends, and others.

iPad Cases

Here is two cases I got for the iPad today. The Apple one and the Incase one. The Incase one is very nice case. It has 4 positions to put the iPad at different angles to view it. When you slide your iPad the back of the iPad is meet with the case soft padded. The openings all line up with Incase which is good, because sometimes these 3rd party cases will sometimes not align. The case is much thicker when closed compare to the Ap

ple case, so it will depend if you would like the case slim or don't mind the extra thickness. So far I like the Incase and will give it a try this week and decide whether I will keep it o

r c

hange it to the Apple one. The case

does a good job of protecting the iPad once you slide it in. The Apple one is very thin and keeps the look of the iPad pretty much thin. It hardly adds any weight to the iPad with this case. The case is like a rubber type that makes gripping the iPad very good, which can help that it will not slip off your hands.

iPad Is in the House...

I had put 2 iPad's on reservation to pick up at my local Apple store for April 3. I got the 16GB for my wife and I got the 32GB for myself. So far this thing is "Magical". This is according to Steve Jobs. There was 2 lines at the Apple store. One was for the non reserved and the other for reserved. There must of been at least 200 people in the line waiting to get their iPad. So far I have set up my email, contacts, and calendar to sync with my BlackBerry Storm 2, so that I can have everything synced up. This works great for me, because no matter which device I pick up I can always check my email or check my calendar.

This makes it easy to update any calendar items when I am using either device.

Netflix runs excellent on the iPad. The Netflix app was added just this week so I was very happy to see that it would work on the iPad. Now I can watch movies when traveling or short outings that we plan with my family. I purchased the CradlePoint CTR350 to use with my BlackBerry Storm 2, so I can have broadband on my iPad for when traveling. Everything on the iPad is very responsive and smooth when scrolling. Multi-Touch is great on the bigger screen vs the iPod Touch and iPhone. Not that the smaller screen is bad, but you have so much more room to work with applications. The Web looks great and works great on the Safari browser. So far most of all the web pages that I go and check daily are working and displaying nicely on the iPad. The sound is very good, I was afraid that by having one speaker at the bottom that the sound would not be loud enough, but it is loud enough to listen in a average noisy area. I have been downloading apps from the app store and trying them out and of course these are the free one's. I will be purchasing Pages, and Numbers to use on the iPad to be able to work with Word and Excel files when I need to do small

changes or create short documents with the on screen keyboard. I can also create long Word d

ocuments by using a BlueTooth keyboard, which then I can type away and create any length of

document. I still have my Stowaway BT keyboard which I will be pairing up to use for on the road typing. I think Apple has a winner with the iPad, not that the up coming slates don't have a chance, but I think the iPad will be what everyone will be comparing too. HP needs to advertise their up coming slate so that the general public knows about it. It always helps if they can get it out to brick and mortar stores so everyone can see and try them.