Archive | January, 2011
Last Gadget Standing Finalist #9: Fujitsu’s Skinniest ScanSnap Scanner
And then there were nine: Here’s our next-to-last finalist in our Last Gadget Standing competition here at CES 2011 in Las Vegas. It’s a scanner–the newest, smallest, and lowest-cost model in Fujitsu’s ScanSnap line. The $199 ScanSnap S1100 is built for portability: It’s the size of a junior box of aluminum foil (it has fold-out paper guides), weighs just 12.3 ounces, and runs off USB power so you don’t need to plug it into the wall. Fujitsu loaned me a unit for evaluation.
The S1100 does single-side scanning only (unlike its portlier-but-still-portable big brother the ScanSnap S1300) and its simple paper path can handle printouts, photos, magazine pages, business cards, and any other document you’re likely to try and feed through it; it can scan a color page at 300-dpi resolution in seven and a half seconds. An adjustable paper path lets you scan both thick plastic cards and pieces of paper as long as 34 inches, and the quality of my test scans was excellent.
CES 2011: Toshiba’s Glasses-Free 3D
4. January 2011
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When it comes to 3D, I’m pretty much a worst-case scenario. I bristle at the fact that I’m expected to wear ill-fitting glasses over my regular glasses. I’ve sampled multiple 3D technologies and found all of them wanting. It all seems like a lot of expense and effort for very little benefit.
But I am sort of intrigued by 3D that doesn’t require glasses. And at a pre-CES party tonight here in Las Vegas, Toshiba was showing a l56-inch flat-screen TV and a laptop which do 3D, no funny goggles required. The two devices use lenticular displays, just like the little picture of Pinocchio I owned when I was three. (Lenticular video screens are also nothing new, though all the ones I’ve seen until now have been blurry and unappealing.)
HP WebOS Tablet: Think February, Not January
4. January 2011
The bad news is that it looks like rumors that HP would unveil its WebOS tablet (possibly called the PalmPad) at CES were wrong. The good news is that the company has scheduled a WebOS press event in San Francisco for February 9th at 10am–and it seems like a very good bet that the tablet will make its debut there. (It presumably sent out the invites today to inoculate itself against anyone being disappointed if CES comes and goes with no WebOS news.)
I’ll be at the event and will provide live coverage–more details as we get closer.
Android Tablet Questions
4. January 2011
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CES 2011 week could reasonably be renamed “National Android Tablet Week.” And as we prepare for the avalanche of announcements, TechRepublic’s Jason Hiner has four questions about Android tablets.
CES 2011: Iomega Does iPhone Backup, Boxee, and the “Personal Cloud”
4. January 2011
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Venerable storage company Iomega has made its CES announcements. They include a unique new iPhone/iPod Touch dock, two TV boxes that are the first ones to run the Boxee software since D-Link’s original Boxee Box, and Web-enabled updates to its network storage products.
Waitaminnit–what is a storage company like Iomega doing making an iPhone dock? Well, its new SuperHero is a storage device: The $69.99 gizmo packs a 4GB SD card. And when you use it with Iomega’s iPhone app, it’ll back up your contacts and photos as you charge your phone. (If you’ve got more than 4GB of stuff, you can swap out the included SD card and insert one of your own.) If you lose your data–or lose your phone, period, and get a new one–you can use the Iomega app to restore the data.
Ballmer Keynote Build-Up
4. January 2011
Microsoft has released a teaser video for Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote tomorrow that it presumably hopes will go viral–and hey, I just helped it do so!
Speaking of teasing, here’s a little shameless self-promotion for our coverage tomorrow…
We Have a Winner!
4. January 2011
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Commenter Jason England won the $150 Amazon.com gift card in our random drawing among everyone who entered 2011 predictions. Congratulations to him and thanks to everyone who entered–and stay tuned for a report on your prognostications.
I Like My 2D Disney in 2D, Please
4. January 2011
I love Disney animation and therefore hate the idea of converting 2D Disney animated features into faux 3D movies.
OnLive Now Building Itself Into Electronics, Starting With Vizio TVs
4. January 2011
OnLive really is becoming the gaming equivalent of Netflix, not only with its upcoming subscription plan for streaming video games, but with plans to become embedded in TVs and Blu-ray players.
First up are Vizio’s web-connected TVs. Consumers won’t need any additional hardware — I assume, or at least hope, that a controller is included — and Vizio can use the existing Marvell chips in its TVs to power the OnLive service, VentureBeat reports. Vizio will also offer OnLive through its connected Blu-ray players, tablets and smartphones. Naturally, OnLive is trying to strike deals with other companies as well.
What to Expect From CES
4. January 2011
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My TIME.com Technologizer column for this week is a CES preview of sorts: I explain why it’s dangerous to accept the show’s big news at face value until products have reached stores and consumers have had the chance to give them a yay or nay. And then I list a few products and categories which I’ll be on the lookout for.
I head to the show on Tuesday afternoon–the show floor doesn’t open until Thursday, but stay tuned for news as I encounter it throughout the week…
CES 2011: Lenovo Intros Consumer Laptops and Desktops by the Dozen
3. January 2011
Desktop PCs are standing flat where they are, as some pundits see it, but Lenovo plans to give them a leg up on lots of levels in 2011. Beyond literally dozens of new multimedia-intensive IdeaPad notebooks for consumers and ThinkPads for businesses, Lenovo’s product rollouts at CES 2011 will also include new IdeaCentre PCs that could help to reimagine the all-in-one category by adding fresh features for TV watching, gaming, and 3D entertainment.
Coming Soon: Microsoft TV?
3. January 2011
Does Microsoft have a competitor to Google TV and Apple TV? Sure: It’s called the Xbox 360, and I’ve always thought it was pretty smart of Microsoft to focus on making its gaming console into a well-rounded entertainment device rather than going head-to-head with purely TV-focused products. But the Seattle Times is reporting that among Microsoft’s CES announcements will be a Windows-based platform for $200 Internet TV boxes.
PrimeSense and Asus Bringing Kinect Tech to PCs
3. January 2011
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It was just over a year ago when PrimeSense showed me (and Harry, separately) a demo of the motion-sensing camera technology that helps power Microsoft’s Kinect game controller. Now, PrimeSense is spreading out and partnering with Asus for gesture control on PCs.
The WAVI Xtion is a motion sensor for browsing multimedia and Internet content, using PrimeSense’s camera and infrared sensor tech to track users in 3D space. It’s meant for home theater PCs and will be commercially available in the second quarter, price unspecified.
More exciting, I think, is Xtion PRO, a tool for third-party developers to create their own gesture-based applications and software. Asus plans to host an online store for developers to hawk their motion-sensing apps, presumably to consumers who buy the WAVI Xtion sensor. The PRO development tools are coming in February.
It all sounds kind of lofty, given that Asus is primarily a hardware company, but if all goes to plan on the software front, Asus could be the the first company to create a market for the creativity of Kinect hackers. We’ve seen some pretty impressive tech demos from hobbyists, so I can only imagine what would come from financial incentives in the form of an app marketplace.
PrimeSense will have the whole setup on display at the Consumer Electronics Show this week. I plan to check it out.
Last Gadget Standing Finalist #8: Intel’s Potent New Platform
3. January 2011
When we announced the Last Gadget Standing finalists last week, we said that three were still under wraps because they hadn’t been announced yet. Well, one is now public, and it’s a technology rather than a gadget per se. It’s Intel’s new-generation Core i3, i5, and i7 processors, code-named “Sandy Bridge” and featuring a CPU, graphics, and memory controller integrated on one die for better performance and battery life. The first new i7-based PCs are now shipping, and Intel says that five hundred Sandy Bridge computers, based on 29 variants of the platform, are in the works.
Last Gadget Standing judge Joanna Stern has a good explanation of all this over at Engadget.
Best Buy’s Buy Back Bonanza
3. January 2011
BGR is reporting on apparent plans by Best Buy to launch a program called Buy Back. It doesn’t have all the details, but the basic idea is this: You pay an up-front fee–supposedly $59.99, at least in the case of phones–when you buy a phone, laptop, netbook, tablet, phone, or TV. That gets you the right to sell the device back to Best Buy for a gift card that covers part of the original cost–50% in the first six months, for instance, and 20% during months 18-24.
Toshiba Does an Android Tablet
3. January 2011
One of the things that will define this year’s Consumer Electronics Show is that it’s the first one of the iPad era–Steve Jobs having unveiled Apple’s tablet two weeks after last year’s CES. And since most of Apple’s competitors have been slow to come up with iPad-like tablets of their own, CES 2011 is going to feature the debuts of iPad rivals by the boatload.
One of them will be from Toshiba. The company isn’t ready to start shipping anything just yet. (It cheerfully admits that it likes to take its time and do its best to ship a more refined product rather than rushing into new markets.) But it’s released some details about an unnamed, unpriced tablet which it intends to ship in the first half of this year.
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5. January 2011
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