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Jelfin ball-shaped mouse hand-on
Some wanted to call the Jelfin ball-shaped mouse a crapgadget, but that was until they wrapped their hands around the spherical mouse. We aren't saying the Jelfin is the best mouse in the world or that it makes you forget about your mouse-woes -- that's if you've even ever had them -- but the gel covered ball is comfortable. At first it was a bit odd to navigate our MacBook Pro 13's desktop with a ball in hand, but we got the hang of it. But while we like the feel of the buttons, which are differentiated with raised gel lines, they don't have enough give and we had to press too hard to double click. We also aren't thrilled that its got a long white USB cord, either. Chances are you'll be better suited by a Logitech for real productivity, but we did enjoy using a ball as a mouse more than we ever could have imagined. %Gallery-82516%
UMID mBook BZ two-fingers on
Oh UMID mBook BZ, it's not easy being the unwanted offspring of a netbook and a MID, is it? Well, it sure isn't easy on us either. After spending a bit of time with the hand-sized device, we just don't really see how anyone could use the small clamshell for more than a few minutes at a time. But hit the break for some hands-on impressions and a video of the $549 lilliputian laptop and decide for yourself. %Gallery-82385%
NVIDIA Tegra 2-powered Mobinnova Beam hands-on
Right on the heels of NVIDIA unleashing its Tegra 2 (T20) platform, Mobinnova is jumping into the picture with one of the first smartbooks powered by the new platform. The device may be small, and quite thin, but it has got a lot going on. First off, the design is nothing short of cool: the back of the rounded device actually snaps down to reveal its ports and to prop up the entire chassis. Under the lid it has a flush 8.9-inch display, but its smaller size causes the keyboard to be quite cramped. The touchpad has integrated mouse buttons, but we noticed that it was tough make selections by left clicking. You'll probably want to stick with double tapping on this one. Under the hood the Mobinnova Beam is powered by Tegra 2, which is based on a 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 CPU and a GeForce GPU. It'll also have 256 MB of memory and pack 512MB of flash storage (though you can expand that with the SD card). The unit we saw was running Windows CE with a software interface developed by Mobinova, though the plan is to release an Android version. We still found it to be easy to navigate with all the applications centered on a carousel of sorts. As promised by NVIDIA, a 1080p video played on the 8.9-inch display and on a 42-inch 1080p Philips TV (take that Atom!) quite smoothly. In our brief hands-on the overall performance seemed snappier than the past Mobinovia with the first Tegra chip: Firefox opened in about 7 seconds and navigating to web pages was faster than we'd anticipated. We don't have any word on pricing, but Mobinova will only sell this bundled with AT&T connectivity. Hit the break for the full PR and some video. %Gallery-81921%
HP Mini Android smartbook hands-on
Okay, so it isn't the HP Slate, but this Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered, Android-running Mini is definitely a departure from all the netbooks they've been putting out lately. At this point, this is just a concept and the white plastic chassis is far from pretty or final, and frankly it just looks like a last generation HP Mini. The 10-inch resistive touch display was responsive to finger taps from what we could see in our brief fondling. Oh and the Android OS we know and love was, you know, running. It all looks interesting, but for now we were way more impressed with Lenovo's Skylight. %Gallery-81848%
