Originally scheduled for a September launch under the VersaPro type VT moniker, NEC’s LaVie Touch Windows 7 tablet is finally hitting the Japanese market next week. Alas, there are still no plans on an international release for this 10.1-inch Atom Z670-powered device, but at CEATEC we were lucky enough to stumble upon it along with its DVD dock and wireless input peripherals — all included for
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today we have our very own Contributing Editor, Jesse Hicks.
I was twelve when my family got our first computer: a 486DX that first appeared without a hard drive. My mom had found a great deal at a computer show…or so it had seemed. That missing 120MB hard drive, as you may have guessed, severely limited functionality. But once that problem was remedied, I was off and running with DOS and XTree, happily deleting essential system files. The learning process had begun.
Continue reading Growing Up Geek: Jesse Hicks
Growing Up Geek: Jesse Hicks originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have our very own Contributing HD Editor, Ben Drawbaugh.
Continue reading Growing Up Geek: Ben Drawbaugh
Growing Up Geek: Ben Drawbaugh originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have our very own Contributing HD Editor, Ben Drawbaugh.
Continue reading Growing Up Geek: Ben Drawbaugh
Growing Up Geek: Ben Drawbaugh originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Haptic feedback isn’t exactly something that’d blow people’s mind these days, with most mobile devices and gaming controllers already packing a little vibrator to spice up one’s gaming experience. While these motors do the job just fine for delivering the sensation of large engines and explosions, their monotonic performance and relatively high minimum output threshold means they can’t reproduce finer vibration. For instance, you wouldn’t be able to feel a guitar string fade away after a strum, nor would you feel the finer end of a spring recoil. This is where Bayer MaterialScience’s ViviTouch — previously dubbed Reflex — tries to fill the void.
For those who aren’t familiar, the magic behind ViviTouch is its electroactive polymer (or EAP in short) — imagine a thin sheet that consists of two electrode layers sandwiching a dielectric elastomer film, and when a voltage is applied, the two attracting electrodes compress the entire sheet. This slim, low-powered ViviTouch actuator module can be placed underneath an inertial mass (usually a battery) on a tray, thus amplifying the haptic feedback produced by the host device’s audio signal between 50Hz and 300Hz (with a 5ms response time).
Gallery: ViviTouch haptic technology hands-on
ViviTouch haptic technology hands-on: electroactive polymer giving a ‘high definition feel’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Sep 2011 10:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
In case you’re still skeptical about the $310 Xiaomi Phone, our brief hands-on with a prototype just now suggests that little should be worried about this Foxconn-made device (not Motorola as previously rumored). While the 1.2GHz or 1.5GHz dual-core phone is a tad thicker and heavier than many other flagship smartphones these days, the soft back felt nice in our hands — a bit like the HTC Sensation but smaller. The overall build quality was surprisingly solid, though we won’t comment much on the software since it was a non-final build (we had a little crash while filming, and the three touch buttons didn’t light up). Leaving those issues aside, we’re definitely looking forward to this nicely priced, feature-packed Android in October. Hands-on video after the break.
Gallery: Xiaomi Phone hands-on
Continue reading Xiaomi Phone hands-on (updated with video)
Xiaomi Phone hands-on (updated with video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Aug 2011 06:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
There’s a Chinese saying that will suit most of our Western readers here: “quenching thirst by gazing at plums.” Oh yes, we’re talking about Dell’s Streak 10 Pro alright. Just as promised, said US company has skipped its home country to debut its first 10.1-inch Honeycomb tablet in China (ka-ching!), and we happened to be at the Beijing press event for some intimate hands-on time. To be honest, you won’t be needing many imaginary plums for this Android’s rather mundane specs: it’s equipped with the oh-so-familiar 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 T20 chip, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 1,280 x 800 LCD (with Corning’s Gorilla Glass), 5 megapixel camera and 2 megapixel camera back and front, and regular-size SDHC expansion. That said, Chinese buyers can grab this 16GB WiFi tablet plus 2GB of cloud storage for just
The Nintendo 3DS may be suffering from a slight lack of hot games at the moment, but thanks to a little update it is certainly not suffering from a lack of great movies and TV shows to watch. The Netflix addition that Nintendo promised us back in the summer is now up for download, and download is just what we did. If you’re wondering just how Instant content looks on the small screen, click on through and find out.
Gallery: Netflix on Nintendo 3DS
Continue reading Netflix on Nintendo 3DS hands-on (video)
Netflix on Nintendo 3DS hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
In the midst of fiddling with tablets and laptops at Computex, we haven’t been thinking much of eye-tracking technologies until we saw Utechzone’s booth. What we have here is the Spring, a TW$240,000 (US$8,380) eye-tracking rig that was launched in March 2010 and is aimed at users with limited mobility. The package consists of an LCD monitor, a computer, and an external sensor that utilizes infrared to track our pupils. Also included is an eye-friendly software suite that lets users play games, browse the web and media files, send emails, communicate with caretakers, and read PDF or TXT files.
We had a go on the Spring and quickly learned how to control it with our eyes: much like the Xbox Kinect, in order to make a click we had to hover the cursor over (or fix our eyes on) a desired button until the former completes a spin. The tracking was surprisingly accurate, except we had to take off our glasses for it to work; that said, the other glasses didn’t exhibit the same issue, so the culprit could be just some coating on our lenses. Another problem we found was that it only took a quick jiggle with our eyes to cancel the spinning countdown, so full concentration is required to use the Spring. This shouldn’t be a problem outside a noisy event like Computex, anyway, and if you need more convincing, we were told that a disabled Taiwanese professor managed to hit 100,000 Chinese characters within three months using phonetic input on the the same rig — he’s planning on releasing a new book soon. Have a look at our eyes-on video after the break for a better idea on how the Spring works.
Continue reading Utechzone Spring eye-tracking system hands-on (video)
Utechzone Spring eye-tracking system hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 08:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We’re not normally all that stoked with motherboards, but Gigabyte’s awkwardly named Z68XP-UD3-iSSD just about got our attention at Computex. The highlight here is the Intel 20GB SLC SSD latched onto the board’s mSATA slot, which is right next to the LGA1155 CPU socket and the four DDR3 RAM slots (together supporting up to 32GB). Alas, Gigabyte says it won’t be offering upgrade options for the SSD, though there are certainly alternatives out there in the wild if you dare to venture. But if none of this interests you, then there’s always our multi-screen Angry Birds hands-on video after the break.
Continue reading Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3-iSSD motherboard eyes-on
Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3-iSSD motherboard eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Jun 2011 13:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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