Windows 8 D9 demo

source – engadget.com/ By Ross Miller

Acer’s dual-screen Iconia laptop is bold, for sure — eschewing a physical keyboard for another display — but its LCD panels are also mighty glossy. If you’ve got a light in the vicinity above you, there’s gonna be glare — we saw it on stage, and we just saw it now in person. That said, the screen is clear and the touch functionality is pretty clever (five fingers open up a widget where you can scroll through other touch-friendly apps). The keyboard, on the other hand, is pretty hard to use — even the rep admitted there’s a learning curve. You can’t rest your fingers down without hitting something, of course. We managed to browse to Engadget, but it took several tries. Check out the photos below!

Update: Now with video! It’s after the break.

Acer Iconia first hands-on!

Oh, hello WindPad! MSI just took the wraps off its 10-inch, Windows 7 tablet during the company’s Computex press conference. The tablet is powered by a 1.66GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor, 2GB of RAM, and packs a 32GB SSD that boots Windows 7 Home Premium, though MSI has created a Wind Touch UI layer. While they were showing early prototypes, it will have two USB ports, an HDMI and a webcam when all is finalized. According to an MSI product manager on hand, the WindPad 100 will hit the market later this year for around $499. We just caught a few minutes with the tablet so hit the break for some early impressions and a short hands-on clip.

MSI WindPad 100 hands-on

The 10-inch tablet is made entirely of plastic — it does feel quite cheap, but on the other hand it’s incredibly light (it’s only 1.7 pounds). The prototype they had out didn’t have any of the final ports, but eventually it will have an HDMI jack that should be able to output 720p video to an HDTV. Our biggest concern about the tablet comes with the speed. We noticed it taking a few seconds for applications to launch, and the Wind Touch UI was incredibly sluggish. Speaking of the interface, it’s just a basic skin on top of Windows and should provide easy access to applications. The 1024×600-resolution capacitive display did seem responsive, though we would have rather it had a higher resolution.

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We don’t say this very often, but some products are just worth the wait. And well, the ExoPC Slate looks like it’s going to be one of those very products. After months of following along, we finally got to spend some quality time with the 11.6-inch slate at Computex, and came away surprisingly impressed. Read on after the break for our impressions of this Windows 7 tablet, what that funky UI is all about, and a video of the Slate in action. Oh, and after you’ve done all that, don’t forget to feast your eyes on the gallery below.

ExoPC Slate hands-on

When it comes down to size, the 11.6-inch ExoPC Slate fits right in between the 12.1-inch JooJoo and the 9.7-inch iPad. And though it’s better held in two hands, it’s still just as thin and light as Apple’s tablet. Overall, we were quite taken with the build quality of the prototype device we saw, and the fact that it manages to make room for two USB ports, an SD card slot and an HDMI out. There’s also a VGA webcam along the top bezel. Internally, the tablet packs an 1.6GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, 2GB of RAM and a 32GB SSD. On top of all that, the Slate promises full 1080p playback thanks to its Broadcom Crystal HD chip. While our experience with the HD solution has been flaky at best, we did witness a high-def clip play smoothly on the screen.

But the hardware and specs of the ExoPC aren’t what impressed us the most about the tablet. Nope, the capacitive touchscreen and the custom software layer on top of Windows 7 stole the show. While we found the 1366 x 768-resolution screen to be super reflective and ridden with poor viewing angles, it was extremely responsive to light taps, swipes and multitouch gestures within Windows 7 Ultimate and ExoPC’s own UI. And the latter is just the sort of thing we have been looking for in a Windows 7 slate. We’ve taken to calling it the Connect Four interface, but regardless of what ExoPC officially calls it, the Win 7 layer is incredibly unique and simple to navigate with a finger. Each of the circles can be customized to contain a different program or website shortcut and there are added setting controls along the peripheries. The video demo should speak for itself, but after just a few minutes of playing around with the device we had gotten the hang of closing apps by dragging them to the side and getting back to the main menu. Interestingly, the ExoPC guys aren’t just relying on regular Windows applications — they have created polished, touch-friendly e-book, music and photo gallery programs. They’re also working with other developers to create an app store. However, those that prefer a standard Windows 7 tablet experience won’t be disappointed — you can easily get back to the OS and they plan to ship it with a stylus for navigating menus / handwriting input.

Here’s where we’d love to tell you the wait is over, but unfortunately it isn’t. ExoPC has a ways to go in terms of working on the LCD quality and the UI integration, but promises that the tablet should be ready by early September for $599. Of course, we’ll believe that when we see it, but at least we’re one step closer to knowing that there are some very solid and innovative Windows 7-based tablets out there.

Update: Our bad for not mentioning the promised battery life. According to ExoPC, the two-cell battery should last five hours on a single charge, but a bit longer when playing video using the Broadcom card. We’d say that we’re probably looking at more like three hours with WiFi on, but we won’t know until we actually get to test it.

• Intel® Core™ i5-520M vPro™ Processor 2.4 GHz, 3 MB L3 cache) with Turbo Boost Technology
• Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 32 (MUI), Bonus Media: Microsoft® Office Professional 2007 60-Day Trial, Microsoft® OneNote® 2007
• 12.1″ WXGA LED backlight bright LCD with wide-viewing angles for better outdoor viewing
• Active digitizer (pen input)
• Intel® HD Graphics
• Built-in webcam with dual digital array microphones for video chat
• 2 GB DDR3 1066 MHz SDRAM memory (2 GB + empty slot)
• 160 GB S-ATA, 5400 rpm hard drive² (protected by Fujitsu Shock Sensor)
• 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN
• Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6200 WLAN
• Integrated Bluetooth Wireless
• Modular Dual-Layer Super-Multi DVD Writer
• Embedded Fingerprint Sensor, integrated TPM, Security Panel
• Integrated ambient light sensor³
• Full-size, spill-resistant keyboard with touchpad (includes scroll sensor)
• High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) port
• User-cleanable dust filter
• Main battery: Lithium ion (6-cell, 5200 mAh)
• One-year International Limited Warranty

The price of the unit comes to show that for now only business will benefit from it.

source – alltouchtablet.com

ASUS Launch Next Generation Eee Top PC ET2010

Specifications – ET2010PNT

Specifications – ET2010AGT

ASUS Eee Top ET2010

Microsoft releases Windows 7 Touch Pack to the general public –  free for download.

The Touch Pack includes:
Microsoft Blackboard, an intricate game of physics in which you solve a puzzle by creating a fanciful machine on a blackboard.

Microsoft Garden Pond, a tranquil game that takes place in serene Japanese water gardens.

Microsoft Rebound, a game in which you use your fingertips to control Tesla spheres with an electrical field between them to catapult a metal game ball into your opponent’s goal.

Microsoft Surface Globe, a program that you can use to explore the earth as a flat 2-D map or as an immersive 3-D experience.

Microsoft Surface Collage, a program that you can use to explore and interact with your photos and arrange them as a desktop background.

Microsoft Surface Lagoon, a screen saver and interactive water simulation, complete with a meditative rock arrangement and playful, shy fish.

If anything from the above sounds interesting and right for you touch enabled PC, follow the download link to Microsoft’s Windows 7 Touch Pack (size 239MB).

Dell Lightning qwerty portrait slider leaked specs:

• 1GHz QSD8250 Snapdragon processor,
• WVGA 4.1-inch OLED display,
• AT&T and T-Mobile 3G,
• five megapixel autofocus camera,
• 1GB of flash with 512MB RAM,
• 8GB of storage on a MicroSD card,
• GPS,
• accelerometer,
• compass,
• FM radio,
• full Flash support including video playback.
• perhaps an upgrade to LTE in Q4 of 2011.

Check out Engadget original post on the leaked Dell Lightning: the ultimate Windows Phone 7 device leaks

and engadget’s gallery

HP is working on a slate PC with an 8.9 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display and a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor. We’ve known that much for ages. What we haven’t really known is how the Windows 7 tablet will stack up against the competition, because all we’ve seen to date is the information HP wants us to see. But the folks at Conecti.ca got their hands on a real, pre-production model and the verdict is… that it’s alright, but nothing too special.

I have to say, I’m disappointed but not surprised. I’ve spent some time with a number of convertible tablets with Intel Atom processors and various versions of Windows, and they tend to suffer from a couple of problems. The operating system just isn’t that easy to navigate using touch-only controls — even with Windows 7 Home Premium’s advanced multitouch gesture support. And they tend to feel sluggish when performing some tasks, such as auto-rotating the display. I suspect this is at least partially due to the low power processor.

What is interesting is that the Spanish site conecti.ca has removed their early review of the HP Slate from their site by a direct request of Hewlett Packard Mexico. What this could mean is lets hope HP will do a little more work to improve the performance of the Slate. It turns out in the end that close cooperation between Software and Hardware producers is vital for delivering a good product in the end(as is the case with Apple and the iPad).

The Viliv S10 tablet netbook series, originally slated for an April 22 release late this month has been pushed forward to various dates listed below, as seen on Dynamism. One customer who ordered a Viliv S10 received an email with the reason “delayed by the factory”. This might also explain why it hasn’t shown up at Best Buy like other Viliv products have.

Atom Z530 CPU, 64GB SSD models -> April 27
Atom Z530 CPU, 32GB SSD models -> May 5
Atom Z530 CPU, 60GB HDD model -> May 7
Atom Z550 CPU models -> May 10

A little more time to save up those pennies for the $1,000+ Atom Z550 / 64GB SSD / 3G / Windows 7 HP model!

Source: Engadget, SlashGear

It’s finally official: Microsoft Pink — the product of Redmond’s acquisition of Danger — has just been unveiled as a pair of handsets sourced from Sharp (which made most of Danger’s Sidekicks) known as the Kin One and Kin Two. The devices are being marketed as Windows Phones, and while they’re ultimately based on most of the same underpinnings of Windows Phone 7, it’s a distinctly and totally different experience — the entire user interface is custom to Kin with a heavy social media slant, a custom browser (we’re told it’s based on the Zune’s browser), and surprisingly, zero support for third-party apps. The displays are capacitive with support for multitouch (yes, you can pinch and zoom in the browser), but there’s no support for in-browser Flash or Silverlight.

Kin One — the phone we’d seen rumored as “Turtle” — is basically a curved square slider with a QVGA display, 4GB of internal storage, 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, and a full QWERTY keyboard. Kin Two, meanwhile, is the phone leaked as the “Pure,” upping the ante with a HVGA display and a more traditional landscape QWERTY slide form factor. It also moves up to an 8 megapixel cam and 8GB of internal storage, but otherwise, the experience is roughly the same as what you get on the One; both phones have WiFi and Bluetooth in addition to their 3G cellular radios. For what it’s worth, Microsoft is emphasizing that internal storage really isn’t a big deal with the Kin phones, because your entire photo and video collection that you capture using the onboard camera is synced seamlessly with your bottomless online storage; you can access the entire collection from your phone at any time by browsing thumbnails, and if you want the full content, you can download it. Kin comes bundled with a desktop web experience that’s entirely based on Silverlight for viewing and sorting just about all of the major stuff that you can see on your phone — contacts, social network status updates, images, and so on — and we’ve got to admit, it looks pretty slick. Keep reading after the break for a lot more info and video!

Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two press shots

A big focus for Microsoft with Kin is the totally new, different, crazy UI, which is based on blocky, simple text, monochromatic elements, and zoomed-in, stylized pictures. The big two features unique to Kin are being called “Spot” and “Loop.” Loop is sort of the Kin’s home screen, aggregating social content from your friends (Twitter, Facebook, and so on) roughly based on order of priority by how you sort your contents, so you don’t have to see as many updates from people you don’t follow too closely. Spot, meanwhile, is an ever-present green dot at the bottom of the screen where you can drag content — just about any content, be it maps, images, status updates, videos — and share it with contacts. Think of it as an “Attach” button in your messaging client, but on steroids.

Both phones have full support for the Zune music and video experience (but not Zune gaming), and it looks like the Zune HD UI we’re accustomed to, just as it does on Windows Phone 7. To loop in the Mac community, Microsoft will be offering a Mac-compatible music side-loader — in other words, it won’t be a true, native Zune client and you won’t be able to use it to shop for music, but it’ll happily connect to iTunes and sync your non-DRM collection. Both phones also support over-the-air firmware updates, so there’ll be no need to tether just for that. Speaking of tethering, data tethering isn’t supported.

Verizon is getting the Kin One and Two in the US in May, while Vodafone has signed on as the European partner for a Fall launch. We’ll update you on specific pricing and availability just as soon as we have it.

We’ve talked a few times about the HP Slate tablet, presented by Steve Ballmer during CES 2010, which is supposed to be a direct competitor to the Apple iPad slate tablet. A lot of rumors have appeared during past months about this mysterious product, but not much more than that.

Today it’s time to take a first look at the specs and see also at a short video with the main features, which by the way, seems a direct hit on the iPad’s lack of USB port, webcam/digital camera and memory card expansion slot. As you can see below the HP Slate is essentially a netbook tablet, the only way you can fit a fully operational OS and a long lasting battery into the same case.

But before we get to the video let’s see the main hardware features of the HP slate:

• 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor
• 32GB of Flash storage (speedy, which is always good)
• 1GB non-upgradable RAM (too bad it doesn’t come with 2GB of RAM)
• SDHC card slot
• 5-hour battery life
• VGA front-facing camera and 3-megapixel camera at the back
• USB port
• 8.9-inch 1024 x 600 capacitive multi-touch display

Price is not yet set but expected to fall right in between 549 and 599$. It’s a little bit more than the entry level iPad, but considering you get a fully fledged computer running Windows 7 (possibly Home Premium) I say is worth the extra cash. What I believe it will be sub par compared to the iPad on the user experience front, as I don’t think the Atom Z CPU is not capable or offering a seamless experiencecompared to the iPhone OS found on the iPad. And I’m not speculating. I’m certain of this as I’ve already tested the Asus EEE PC T101MT with an Atom Pinetrail CPU that was very sluggish on common tasks.

But this it arrives on market (sometime this year, till then here’s the official HP page for Slate) here’s the video presentation below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeDalRBjyJo

And a comparison photo that highlights the strong points of both HP Slate and Apple iPad, as seen by Engadget.

Lenovo has announced another new netbook with the IdeaPad S10-3s. It is pretty much identical to the current IdeaPad S10-3 model except the S10-3s has the option for an Atom N470 processor, SSDs and higher resolution 1280 x 720 display on the hardware side and a few tweaks on the cosmetic side of things – rounder curves on the lid and newly designed buttons on the screen bezel (round instead of square). We’re back to 100% glossy here and it looks cheaper than the S10-3 (check photos from my IdeaPad S10-3 review).

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3s Specs

• 10.1” 1024 x 600 or 1280 x 720 display
• Intel Atom N450 or N470 processor
• 1 / 2 GB RAM
• 160 / 250 / 320 GB HDD
• 16 / 32GB SSD
• Dolby Headphone
• APS protection
• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• WWAN / 3G
• Windows 7 Starter
• Quick Start (Instant On OS)
• 3 or 6-Cell Battery
• 2.76 pounds (6-cell battery)

The IdeaPad S10-3s will start shipping in mid-April with prices starting at $379.99. It’ll be available in black, white or “spring flowers”.

Press shots below:

Source: Engadget, Liliputing

Windows 7 has been well received both critically and on the street. And while Lifehacker readers love Windows 7, a well-built OS isn’t a perfect OS. Check out these five applications that tweak Windows 7 and customize it to your heart’s content.

A stock Windows 7 installation a fairly pleasant place to work, judging from our readers’ reports. Even so, a little tweaking of its behavior, looks, and other features lets you optimize and personalize that desktop. Check out these five great tools for doing so.

God Mode (Windows, Free)

The “God Mode” in Windows 7 isn’t quite like a video game God Mode—alas, no infinite laptop battery life or unlimited bandwidth—but it is a pretty nifty hack, and doesn’t require any new installations. Create a new folder on your Windows desktop, save it with the name God-Mode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}, though you can substitute whatever name you want for “God-Mode.” The folder will change icons, and when you click on it, you’ll see every configuration option available in the control panel. That’s the real power of the Windows 7 God Mode—it takes all the toggles you have to dig through the control panel menus and sub-menus to get to, and puts them right in one master list. It’s worth trying out God Mode just to see settings you may not have even been aware of.

Regedit (Windows, Free)

The Windows registry is a treasure trove of tweak-friendly variables and values. You shouldn’t muck around in it blindly, but by reading up on specific variables, you can tweak all manner of things that slightly irk you. Stroll through #registry here at Lifehacker to read up on all sorts of neat tricks, like how to speed up the Windows 7 taskbar, customize the login buttons, and tweak Aero peek . While you’re learning about the registry, you’ll want to check out our guide to the registry and registry cleaning. If you’re not comfortable directly editing your Windows registry, we’d advise you to check out some of the other Windows tweaking applications in the Hive Five. Many of the settings they provide are just a neat graphic interface for the variables hidden in the bowels of the registry.

Windows 7 Manager (Windows, $40)

Windows 7 Manager doesn’t do anything that you can’t do with various pieces of freeware or registry tweaks, but it does roll together dozens of functions into a unified, simplified interface. Not only can you tweak the GUI of Windows 7 but you can also tweak your boot routines, find duplicate files, securely erase files, retrieve and backup software keys, and more. Windows 7 Manager comes with a 15 day trial, so you can pit it against the free options in today’s Hive before shelling out your hard-earned cash.

Rainmeter (Windows, Free)

Rainmeter is a skinning application for Windows, but that doesn’t quite do it justice. You can do nearly anything with data using Rainmeter, from embedding the weather into your desktop to massaging the entire way you interact with your OS into something new. The best testament to the versatility and outright coolness of Rainmeter is wandering through the#rainmeter tag here at Lifehacker, and checking out all the unique desktops and tweaks readers have shared with us—also worth a peek is the best desktops of 2009, many of them featuring Rainmeter. If you look at your Windows desktop and go beyond thinking, “I wish the taskbar had different spacing,” and more toward, “I wish my Windows interface looked like something totally new and Star Trek-flavored,” then Rainmeter is for you.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker (Windows, Free)

For those of you that remember and loved the TweakUI utility from Microsoft, Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a freeware tool that takes the concept of the old TweakUI and supercharges it for Windows Vista and 7. You can tweak hundreds of settings and variables—system tray icons, the menu pop-up speed, security settings for the control panel, and a lot of other things you can’t normally get to. It’s a 380 KB, stand-alone portable application, so if you’re curious to see just how many things you can tweak, it’s no hassle at all to take it for a spin.

Although we were a little more focused on Windows Phone 7 Series when we went to MIX 10, Microsoft’s other big announcement at the conference was Internet Explorer 9, which offers HTML5 support and support for GPU acceleration throughout the browsing experience. We saw a few demos of the system in action at MIX, but this video from NVIDIA does a little better job showing how helpful that extra GPU boost can be — IE9 running on the Ion 2-based Eee PC 1201PN smokes a regular Atom-based netbook across a suite of tests. What that’s going to mean for battery life is up in the air, especially since the GPU on an Optimus system like the 1201PN kicks in automatically, but it’s pretty cool to see a netbook browsing the web at almost desktop-like speeds. Check the video after the break.

We won’t detail our murderous wrath for glossy netbooks, but we will tell you that ASUS is on our good side today by striking the shiny lid on its newest 10-inch Eee PC 1001PX in exchange for a carbon fiber-like replacement. The little guy boasts the same specs as the budget Eee PC 1001P — an Intel Atom N450 CPU, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive — and will be available in the US in May. And if you had any doubt that ASUS is after Acer’s throat in pricing, we’re told that the Windows 7 Starter model will be priced at an aggressive $299, while the XP version will only set you back a cool $279. In typical ASUS form, we’re hearing word of an Eee PC 1001PG that will fall into this same line, but will be equipped with 4G in most markets and possibly 3G and 4G stateside. Now, if only we had as much information about those brewing Eee Pads…

ASUS Eee PC 1001PX press shots

Windows: Windows desktop customization tool Omnimo takes the look and feel of the upcoming Windows Phone 7 user interface and brings it to any Windows desktop in an attractive and functional form that’s fresh, useful, and full of eye candy.

(Click most of the images in this post for a closer look.)

When you’re done setting it up, the Omnimo customization will add Windows Phone 7-style widgets to your desktop that’ll give you quick access to weather, calendars, your favorite programs, your unread email, notes, system monitoring (like CPU, hard drive, and RAM use), Wi-Fi signal strength, and oh-so-much-more. Best of all, everything’s easily customizable via drag and drop once you make it through the setup, so you can make it look however you want. Here’s a quick sampling of various setups straight from the Omnimo homepage:

Note: Omnimo should work on any Windows system, XP through Windows 7.

read on the rest of the article at lifehacker.com

Don’t look surprised. With the Windows Phone 7 Series dev tools now out in the open the pent up demand for that elusive HD2 upgrade was bound to be a priority for some well-meaning developers, somewhere… namely, Russia. Now we’ve got what looks to be the first screenies of the WP7S OS running on an HD2. Better yet, htcpedia claims that almost everything is working including WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth. However, the graphics driver is still showing problems and there is noticeable device lag. Nevertheless, the team is planning a beta release soon. Imagine it, an HD2 WP7S ROM available before Microsoft and its partners can even launch an official device, with its 5 buttons or not — now that would be something. One more grab after the break, the rest at the source below.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]