CES - Tablets and e-book readers

LAS VEGAS--You might not remember it, but the Zip drive was arguably the most popular external storage solution during the second half of the '90s. With the initial storage capacity of 100MB (which later increased to up to 750MB), it was a perfect replacement for the floppy drive.

The Zip drive is similar to a floppy drive, with the slot just slightly larger to accommodate the thicker Zip disks.

With the rapid increase of internal hard drives' capacity, though, the Zip drive couldn't keep up, and its popularity started to wane at the turn of the century. By 2005 … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Admittedly, Vizio's Android tablet is one I didn't see coming. After spending some time with it this afternoon, I'm declaring it a happy surprise. Granted, there's no pricing, and no firm ship date, but my vaporware detectors weren't ringing on this one.

Even in its fragile state as a hand-tooled engineering sample, it's clear that this 8-inch tablet has been approached thoughtfully. The capacitive touch screen is very responsive, and the custom UI running over an unidentified version of Android behaved fluidly. Unlike most Android tablets I've tested, Vizio's tablet dispenses … Read more

With the ever-growing popularity of tablets and smartphones, more and more manufacturers are attempting to combine the best features of both types of devices. Not to be left out in the cold, dark, dank world of tablet/smartphone obscurity, on Tuesday Asus announced the Eee Pad Memo.

The Memo includes a 7-inch IPS (in-plane switching) multitouch screen and a separate media phone extender. The device can be used as a phone and includes SMS text messaging.

The tablet/smartphone hybrid comes with with a stylus and includes the Media Note text application and Painter.

Media Note allows users to draw, make handwritten notes, as well as insert external media into said notes, like images, video, and Web links.

Painter allows users to paint on the screen using using the stylus, you know, for those of you so inclined to do so.

Specs:… Read more

I love the idea of tablets. A smallish, thin, quickly accessible portable computer with (hopefully) a low performance overhead. However, one of my biggest gripes with tablets is the size of my thumbs. Well, more accurately the size of the software keyboard keys and how they relate to the size of my large thumbs.

The easy solution to this problem is to add a hardware keyboard into the mix, as Asus is doing with the Eee Pad Slider. Though this would likely solve my large-thumb problem, it also encroaches on one of the previously mentioned advantages to tablets. Asus is … Read more

It's a curious risk to claim to have made "the most powerful tablet," seeing as how most things done on tablets rarely require much power in the first place.

On Tuesday Asus announced its self-proclaimed most powerful tablet, the Eee Slate EP121. It's unclear as yet how it arrived at this conclusion, but for now we're willing to play along, with a healthy helping of incredulity.

For what it's worth, the Slate definitely sounds powerful with its specs taken into account.

Here's a quick rundown:

A short battery life is bad news for any consumer electronics device, and tablets are no different. Unless we've been recently burned, battery life is that one thing we usually take for granted when looking at device specs, but it's always there, waiting to bite us in the rear when we least expect it.

Now a 16-hour battery life isn't ideal, but it would get most of us through our day with room to spare. For its Transformer tablet, Asus claims up to 16 hours of battery life; however, this figure is based on beta hardware and … Read more

Joby, maker of a distinctive line of knobby-legged flexible tripods for cameras and other devices, has entered the iPad market with two products that serve both as cases and props.

First is a flexi-legged iPod holder called the GorillaMobile Yogi. It attaches with a protective polycarbonate case and can used to simply prop up an iPad in portrait or landscape orientation or, for the more adventurous, attach it to something with the legs. Joby suggests glomming it onto kitchen fixtures to show recipes, but I'd watch out for the flour and flecks of olive oil.

Second is a folding … Read more

LAS VEGAS--You should by now have heard of Seagate's Momentus XT (if not, check out our review). It is the first mass-produced hybrid hard drive that offers some benefits of a solid-state drive (SSD) at a much lower cost and without the sacrifice of storage space.

The Momentus XT is called "hybrid" because it consists of a traditional platter-based hard drive and 4GB of flash memory, within one physical chassis. Now what if you want to create a hybrid package by combining an SSD and a traditional hard-disk drive (HDD)?

The answer is what Marvell announced today, … Read more

LAS VEGAS--You want to connect your desktop computer to a big-screen TV so your gaming can go big, literally? Now you can do that, and more, wirelessly.

Amimon, a prominent member of the Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI) consortium, together with Asus today announced the WAVI 3D wireless PC-to-TV package. This kit is the first of its kind to enable consumers to wirelessly connect a desktop PC to a TV with support for 3D content.

This means you now can enjoy 3D PC video games as well as 3D movies on any 3D-capable HDTV, using the PC as the player.… Read more