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Hanvon's multitouch tablet previewed, surfaces in China March 25th with 1080p playback
Though cheap Android craptablets were a commodity item at CeBIT 2010, that doesn't mean we didn't find the occasional diamond in the rough. Specifically, the Hanvon Touchpad BC10C, a sleek, multitouch Windows 7 device with specs firmly entrenched in high-end netbook territory. Thanks to our friend jkkmobile, we now know exactly what's powering this thing -- a comparatively juice-gulping 1.3GHz Celeron M ULV 743 CPU and GMA4500 graphics -- and that when it comes to the US and Europe, it'll cost a little more than we thought, hovering around $877. Mind you, that price bump might be worth it when you consider just how smoothly the 10-inch tablet performs (peep 1080p video and Microsoft Surface Globe demos after the break) but also know your YouTube surfing sessions will be limited by a simply sad 3.5 hours of battery life. For when "mobile" isn't an important word in your vocabulary... the BC10C launches in China March 25th.
Adobe's Flash Player 10.1 beta GPU acceleration tested, documented
We know you don't actually care about 99 percent of the contents of the latest Flash Player update. What you really want to know is whether those new 1080p YouTube streams will run smoothly on your machine thanks to the newly implemented graphics card video acceleration. AnandTech has come to our collective aid on that one, with an extensive testing roundup of some of the more popular desktop and mobile GPU solutions. NVIDIA's ION scored top marks, with "almost perfect" Hulu streaming (see table above), though Anand and crew encountered some issues with ATI's chips and Intel's integrated GMA 4500 MHD, which they attribute to the new Flash Player's beta status. On the OS front, although Linux and Mac OS are not yet on the official hardware acceleration beneficiary list, the wily testers found marked improvements in performance under OS X. It seems, then, that Adobe has made good on its partnership with NVIDIA, and made ION netbooks all the more scrumptious in the process, while throwing a bone to the Mac crowd, but leaving the majority of users exercising the virtue of patience until the finalized non-beta Player starts making the rounds in a couple of months. Hit the read link for further edification.
