Samsung Galaxy Tablet Looks Fast

Engadget embedded a problematic video. Someone ripped it and posted it on YouTube. Now I’ve embedded that one here.

Of course, every demo video looks wonderful. But unless they played with the video speed, this thing looks like it’s wicked fast.

No telling what additional APIs Samsung might have thrown in there to make devs have to crank out a GTab-specific version of their apps, though.

If they price this over $350-$400, it’s dead in the water for most of the public, though.

Apple To Kill Samsung’s Galaxy Tablet Day Before Debut?

Apple Issues Invitation For September 1 “Special Event”

Gee, is there anything happening on the 2nd?

I think Apple did this deliberately. It’s been prepping this announcement all along, had it all ready to go, but have been waiting to see who they could stab with a pre-emption.

I thought they’d announce on September 8th. And some people today said September 7th.

I wouldn’t expect any 7″ iPad Mini to be available immediately. But all they have to do is “preview” it as One More Thing and that will kill all competitors and pretenders to the iPad throne.

Oh Snap!

@mikecane Think of it this way: The samsung tablet is a less portable Dell Streak, not a more portable iPad.Tue Aug 24 19:43:59 via TwitterrificBaldur Bjarnason
fakebaldur

Apple Will Do A Seven-Inch iPad This Year

I don’t see how Apple can not do this.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab is an Android 2.2-based tablet with a seven-inch screen.

It looks damn slick in this promo video.

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I don’t see how Apple can let smaller and less-expensive tablets such as this tempt people away from the iPad.

The iPad is vulnerable both on the issues of price and size.

While $499 is really an impressive price for what an iPad delivers, people might look at a lower-priced Android tablet such as this and go with Good Enough — just as those who are stuck on, or prefer, current cellphone carriers make do with an Android-based cellphone instead of the iPhone they’d rather have.

And that size issue matters too. Just ask any woman who would prefer technology that’s easily toted in a shoulder bag versus one that must be carried separately in a hand.

The price/size nexus is what drove sales of netbooks too.

In these financially-stressed times, people don’t have money to spend twice. If they wind up with a lower-priced Android tablet, that pushes an iPad purchase further away. That’s money lost by Apple.

Steve Jobs must understand this. And delivering the iPad first in a large edition blunted all the critics who would have called a seven-inch iPad too small to be practical or useful.

Now that people understand just how good an iPad is, making it less expensive, smaller, and lighter would be icing on the Win cake.

With Samsung due to announce its Galaxy Tab on September 2nd, will we begin to see credible leaks for a seven-inch iPad? I think so.

Let’s wait and see.

Photos Cloned From eBay: Hacked Pandigital Novel

I’m not even going to link to the listing because some people might get the idea that I’m recommending this, involved with this, or selling this. None of those happen to be the case. I simply got curious and got on eBay moments ago and started searching for the Pandigital Novel.

These are photos showing a Pandigital Novel hacked to run other Android applications. It looks like the same method that Nate used.

And Boom: Two More Android Anti-iPad Tablets

Yesterday I highlighted the Pandigital Novel. Today, there’s something that looks better: The Cruz Reader.

Yes, it’s basically the same as the Pandigital Novel. The sizes are virtually identical, according to the Cruz spec page:

Pandigital Novel: 5.5″ x 7.5″ x 0.5″
Cruz Reader: 5.6″ x 7.55″ x 0.57″

What makes this better is that they appear not to have locked down Android at all. And this confirms it has Android 2.0, which was only a rumor on the Pandigital Novel.

So, allow me to change my mind. If you’re looking for an Android tablet, skip the Pandigital Novel if you have any reticence about being able to install a different driver and then bugger about with installing apps via a command line. Instead, get the Cruz Reader. It has Kobo Reader installed on it, but that shouldn’t prevent adding Barnes & Noble’s eReader (when they finally make that available for Android), Aldiko, FBReader, or anything else for Android.

Remember too: This is a resistive screen. Don’t count on something like this to enter text or to tweet from!

Ah, but Velocity Micro has another tablet too: the Cruz Tablet.

This looks like an improved Camangi WebStation. It claims to have a capacitive screen — but it’s also only 800 x 480 versus the 800 x 600 of the Reader. And it’s $100 more expensive.

Android was supposed to debut with tablets running a kick-ass Tegra2 CPU. These are not them. If those Tegra-based tablets are still coming, they’re bound to be at least double the price of these.

No matter what comes out with Android, none of them will be an iPad. But still, for anyone who has been curious about Android but doesn’t want the expense of a phone contract, the Cruz Reader offers an inexpensive opportunity to play around.

Out Of Nowhere, The iPad Has A Real Competitor

Oh, it’s not an iPad. Not even close to the smoothness and sleekness of one.

However, consider these points:

1) It’s less than half the price of the least-expensive iPad.
That’s $500 for a 16GB iPad versus less than $200 for something you can stick an SD card into — one up to 32GB!

2) It’s Android — which you can now make your own apps for.
Want a silly app with a picture of your cat meowing just for your own amusement? You can do that.

3) It’s in the price point of a crappy eInk device — yet it combines the features of three of them!
Forget buying a Kindle or a Nook or a Kobo Reader. This can do all three of those!

4) It will be on sale all over the place.
Staples, Target, Office Depot, Best Buy, and many, many other places.

Virgin Mobile To Offer Prepaid 3G MiFi

This is really big news. All those people who have WiFi iPads and sometimes lust for anywhere 3G but don’t want to be tied to a long contract? This is the solution.
Virgin Mobile MiFi Outed by Best Buy, Coming Next Week

Since this is Virgin Mobile, this MiFi will be entirely prepaid – $149 for the device, and then anywhere from $10 for 100 MB to $60 for 5 GB.

That’s more or less a wash.

Instead of $130 more to Apple for built-in 3G, it’s $20 more ($149, which we all round to $150) for a MiFi that can be used with any device — iPad, laptop, netbook, iPod Touch.

The 5GB limit of AT&T (and Sprint and Verizon) is there too, but for the whopping price of $60/month. On the other hand, there’s no contract, as there would be with Sprint or Verizon — for their whopping $60/month.

I’ve read stories of how less convenient it is, using a MiFi vs. an iPad’s built-in 3G, but the MiFi can be used with anything, while the iPad’s 3G is just for the iPad. I’ll take that trade-off and the benefit of using the MiFi with anything else I want to connect.

Asus Is What A Failing Company Looks Like

I had to pop onto the Net to see what the developments from Computex have been thus far.

Asus should have bought Palm. Because what they’ve been showing at Computex is just full of FAIL.

Go see Joanna Stern’s coverage at Engadget.

Asus has designed everything to look like it came from Apple. That’s the first sign a company has run out of ideas.

The second is trying to make Windows 7 into a tablet. It just can’t be done. No matter what lipstick is slapped on that pig, once you exit the customized lipstick, you hit an app that is not designed at all for touch.

And as it is, not enough of Windows 7 has been lipsticked over. Asus and Microsoft really expect people to be able to successfully fingertip tap on icons at the top and bottom of screens when those icons are about one-eighth of an inch tall?

And then there’s that MP3 player. It looks like the designer — so-called — watched Minority Report too many times. While on LSD. And no one ever noticed and just went ahead and allowed that design through.

Third, Asus is really, seriously thinking of releasing a monochrome device — with a camera in it!! — in 2010? It’s like they’ve not only decided to rip off current Apple, they went back and dredged up the Newton — except they crapped all over it! Here’s the view from jkkmobile:

September release? I say that thing will never, ever go on sale.

It doesn’t matter who releases a Windows 7-based tablet. It will be utter garbage. Hewlett Packard understood that — which is why they went and bought Palm.

Let’s hope there are some companies doing something interesting with Android. Asus would have done better with that instead of Windows 7.

Archos 7 Home Tablet User Guide

Pop over to the Archos site and select Support and then from the drop-down menu choose Documentation.

Then at the drop-down menu there, select Archos 7 Home Tablet for a PDF of the User Guide.

I’d post a direct link, but Archos seems to like people to select a country and go in that way. Bah.

It’s old school, with crop marks for actual printing:

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