Windows 8 D9 demo

jc plus esther // all 7d highlights from stillmotion on Vimeo.

all it took to shoot this video was:

• one cinematographer
• two Canon 7D cams
• four lenses; 50 f1.2, 24 f1.4, 100 macro f2.8, 70-200 f4 non-IS
• one tripod, one monopod, one cinevate pegasus heavy lifter (slider)
• audio was through a tascam and zoom h4n paired with sennheiser ew g2 wireless lavs
• no external lighting was utilized in any of the shots in the final piece. everything was working with what was there.

total cost of all the gear used that day was approx $10k.

see more at stillmotionblog.com

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQrvLkJWj4c

The Wikipedia site doesn’t often go down, but yesterday it did. It’s also unusual for YouTube to suffer downtime, but since approximately 7:05 AM Eastern time visitors to the homepage have been greeted with an error message that simply reads “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable” or a 500 Internal Server Error message.

Seriously, what is the world coming to?

Fortunately, videos still play on sites where they are embedded, and when you head directly to dedicated video URLs you should be able to watch them without a hitch (example).

In the meantime, there’s so much chatter about it on Twitter that the words ‘Service Unavailable’ actually graduated to a Trending topic.

We’re awaiting a response from Google about the extended homepage downtime.

Who says you have to pick between a netbook and the coming onslaught of standalone tablet devices? Okay maybe some (eh hem Apple), but Lenovo’s trying to have it both ways with the IdeaPad U1 and the S10-3t. In clamshell mode the S10-3t looks like any old 10-inch netbook, but swivel around its capacitive mulitouch display and it turns into that slate device you’ve been dreaming of. That’s not all: the S10-3t is one of the first netbooks (or netveritbles) that has the new Intel 1.83GHz Atom N470 processor. But can the S10-3t straddle both worlds and do it well? And perhaps more importantly, is it worth the premium $649 price tag? That’s the question we’ve been asking ourselves for the last few days, so hit the break for some answers in our full review.

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t review

Look and feel

There’s nothing too jaw-dropping about the S10-3t’s design, and we’d actually be totally fine with that if it didn’t have the glossiest black lid known to man. While the lid is inlaid with a subtle glitter tint and boxy pattern, you wouldn’t know it with all the smudgy fingerprints it collects. And though the plastic chassis feels solid enough, the lid did collect some scratches from being in our bag so you’ll want to pick up a case to keep the little guy clean and warm.

For a netbook the .79-inch S10-3t is actually rather trim, and it’s noticeably narrower than other 10-inch systems. While it’s obviously thicker than standalone tablets or e-readers like the Kindle DX, when equipped with its four-cell battery the 2.7-pound tablet was light enough to hold up in bed while reading. However, that eight-cell bulging battery version that we saw at CES looks like it would be incredibly uncomfortable to hold in arm.

One of the biggest benefits of the convertible form factor is having access to a full size, physical keyboard, but for a netbook we’re just not that impressed with the S10-3t’s layout and keys. The matte white keys are particularly bouncy and are more cramped than usual. Perhaps it’s the fact that we’ve gotten used to the chiclet keyboard layout, but our first draft of this review was ridden with typos.

As a result of the S10-3t’s narrower dimensions, its palmrest is thinner, which in turn means very limited touchpad real estate. The rectangular pad with its integrated mouse buttons is about the size of a USB stick, and provides an incredibly cramped navigation experience. While it doesn’t make up for all the backtracking our fingers had to do, we do like the feel of the raised dots on the pad itself. Are we totally crazy for thinking Lenovo should have grabbed a ThinkPad pointing stick and stuck it in the middle of the keyboard?

Screen and tablet performance

Of course, the hope is that you should be able use the capacitive touchscreen to move around in Windows 7 Home Premium, and for the most part it’s a decent touch navigation experience. The 1024 x 600 resolution is actually ideal for the 10.1-inch display – desktop icons are large enough to select with a light finger tap, but getting at the smaller menus requires more than a few jabs at the screen. Lenovo does preload Bumptop, which creates a 3D desk-like view of your desktop, but honestly we find the whole interface rather frustrating and would have just preferred Lenovo put on its SimpleTap software for those larger touch controls to adjust the volume or view the remaining battery power.

Multitouch gestures were responsive; we got in the hang of sticking two fingers on the screen to scroll down the length of web pages or pinching to make text larger. As soon as you swing the display around using the S10-3t’s fairly sturdy, bidirectional hinge, Lenovo’s Natural Touch interface launches. The full screen finger-friendly carousel interface provides large shortcuts to Lenovo’s own photo, music and e-book software. We’re not sure why you’d choose this multimedia software over Microsoft’s Media Player and Photo Gallery, but the e-book software does open PDF or e-pub files and adds note taking and bookmark functions. Though it’s a nice piece of software, we preferred Amazon’s Kindle for PC app to access our collection of already-purchased titles.

While the touch reading experience was smooth and we enjoyed flicking through pages and pinching to zoom in on text, it was our experience reading the New York Times Reader while laying down that brought out the biggest issue with the screen – its viewing angles. Though the extra glossy screen contributes somewhat to the issues, we encountered major color distortion both horizontally and vertically, and at some angles we couldn’t even see what was on the screen. It was especially apparent when we tried to look at an Olympic photo gallery while lying in bed – we had to adjust ourselves and the tablet quite a bit to comfortably flick through the images. Why Lenovo had to use a cheap LCD on this device is beyond us – it craps up a perfectly enjoyable experience.

The device has an accelerometer, but we found it to be a bit flaky; we ended up using the button on the side of the screen more often than not to change the screen orientation, and even when we used this solution we got impatient with the typical five second adjustment period. Lastly, we should mention that Lenovo doesn’t include a stylus, so if you want to take advantage of Windows 7’s handwriting functionality you’re going to need to come up with one of your own or, you know, find a piece of meat.

Performance and battery life

We went into reviewing the S10-3t hoping it would be one of the faster netbooks we’ve ever used considering its new 1.83GHz Atom N470 processor and 2GB of RAM. However, those dreams quickly faded when we were met with the typical netbook performance. In fact, the N470 scored 1,348 on PCMark05, which is actually lower than the N450-powered HP Mini 210’s 1393. That’s sort of a letdown for us, but in typical usage — writing this review and surfing the web — performance seemed snappy. We did notice it taking a bit of time for certain apps within Lenovo’s NaturalTouch to open but we’re inclined to blame the slow 320GB hard drive or software for that. With no change made to the GMA 3150 graphics, the S10-3t was fine for playing standard def video, but couldn’t handle streaming a 720p music video without stuttering.

On our video rundown test the S10-3t’s four-cell battery lasted three hours and 12 minutes, but when we actually used the system to write this review and surf the Web we got close to four and a half hours of battery life. In our minds that’s not all that bad considering the battery fits flush with the system, but you can always go up to the chunky eight-cell for a couple more bucks.

Wrap-up

As both a netbook and a tablet the S10-3t leaves a bit more to be desired. Sure, we’re disappointed that the N470 processor doesn’t provide improved performance, but what’s even more aggravating is that $649 buys you a tiny trackpad, sluggish touchscreen software and terrible viewing angles. Maybe you can live with those shortcomings, but we’re personally holding out for a better netbook / tablet combo to come along.

Sascha from Netbooknews takes a look at the latest generation of 10-inch Pinetrail tablet convertible netbooks, the Gigabyte T1000, Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t and the Viliv S10 Blade. All pretty much unique in their own way, with their own strong points but when it comes to looks, size and weight, the Viliv S10 Blade is clearly ahead of the other two.

Both the T1000 and S10 have 1366 x 768 displays. The S10-3t and T100 are available with Atom N470 processors, the S10 has either an Atom Z530 or Z550 processor. No accelerometers on any of them. S10 has a resistive 3-point display vs capacitive 2-point on the S10-3t (don’t know if T1000 is resistive or capacitive). With a decent configuration the S10 will be the most expensive.

Video below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z6qYwlLErA

Remind us to send a thank-you note to Hanvon for taking a break from cranking out e-readers to work on some of the best tablets we’ve seen at CeBIT yet — much more advanced that what was shown by the company back in September. While the TouchPad BC10C and BA10E didn’t have any special software running on top of Windows 7 Home Premium, both of their 10.1-inch, capacitive multitouch displays were extremely responsive. The BA10E was the more aesthetically-pleasing of the duo, with a smooth grey bezel and a thin, lightweight body that was cool to the touch. If you hadn’t guessed already, that beauty comes at a cost to processing speed, with just a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor inside. (Although the official specs list Windows XP and stylus input, as you can see in the video it was clearly using Windows 7 and multitouch — the Atom CPU might also be an error, but the rep on hand couldn’t say.) The BC10C, while bulkier, boasts an Intel Celeron chip — a little more power, but we can’t help but wonder how battery life would suffer. Hanvon told us these babies would run for about 500 euros, with release date currently unknown. You know the drill: gallery below, and video after the break.

read on entire article with more photos form the hands-on and video at engadget.com

Untill yesterday, the 2740p was just a mysterious convertible tablet from HP, but now that it was presented to the press, I know what’s all about it and will share that info with you.

The HP 2740p is part of the Elitebook series and is a premium convertible tablet PC, with magnesium alloy rugged case and is compliant with military grade MIL-STD 810G standard for vibration, dust, humidity, altitude and temperature resistance plus has a chemically-strengthened glass display panel.

From the loops of it HP Elitebook 2740p doesn’t look like a road warrior, but once you get your hands on it you get the feeling of strength and quality build. It’s what you would expect from atablet starting at 1599$, but you’ll definitely want to beef up the standard configuration with a normal voltage Core i7 CPU (default is Core i5), add some RAM, up to 8 GB, add a 320 GB hard drive, or 160 GB SSD, add another expansion battery or travel base that adds some expansion ports.

You can even pick up a better screen specially build for outdoor use. Both options are capacitive screens, offer multi touch and pen input and offer 1280 x 800 pixels resolution. Connectivity options are also top notch: WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1, EVDO/HSDPA and even GPS. The whole package is 1.25 x 11.42 x 8.35 inches and weighs from 3.8lbs with the 6 cell battery that’s good for up to 5 hours of use (so expect 3 t0 3.5 hours with it). You can add another slim battery that’s attached at the bottom of the laptop which increases overall thickness by a few millimeters and also adds another 6 hours to the original 5 hours estimate. There’s even a LED on the screen that’s used to illuminate the keyboard.

If you’re crazy about connections you can add an Ultra-Slim Expansion Base that supports DispalyPort, an eSata port and includes a DVD+/-RW drive for 299$ but I bet you could live without those if you have a fully loaded desktop at home. Even if it weights 3.8 lbs it doesn’t seem that heavy, at least compared to the Lenovo X201T we’ve presented earlier. Below there’s a hands on video from Slashgear:

Source: Engadget, Ubergizmo

We’re only a few breathless days away from the Devour hitting some retail locations ahead of nationwide US availability in March, so what better way to fill that gap than with an official teaser video? Moto’s Rick Osterloh is our tour guide in a seven minute hands-on demo of the device, which takes us through the major attractions on offer. He firstly calls out the Qualcomm CPU inside and points to the phone’s responsiveness, which is (quite naturally) followed by a couple of instances of perceptible lag between his input and the phone’s reaction. All the same, it does look like a sprightly little machine, and the inclusion of Blur, Google Maps Navigation with turn-by-turn voice instructions, and Moto Phone Portalmakes for a compelling software package. Head past the break to see them in action and to catch another eyeful of the hardware as well.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBtrhgn3fJA

A guy snowboarding behind a Subaru Forester in the streets of South East DC, followed by a cop car. The cops are taking a video of it and are taking it easy.

“I love those cops!”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmgRevCCPVI