If you didn't believe the Tegra hype -- 25 days audio, 10 hours of 1080p video on single charge -- already then pull up a stool, son, NVIDIA wants to tell your a story. TechVideoBlog sat down with Gordon Grigor, NVIDIA's Director of Mobile Software to see Tegra's little Atom smasher in action. So sit back while Gordon smoothly streams a 720p MSN HD trailer off the web (over WiFi) then switches over to Firefox to take Flash for a spin at full-screen. Gordon also clarifies earlier confusion over Tegra's ability to handle HD video; see, the Tegra 600 can do H.264 video at 720p while the Tegra 650 can decode 1080p. Gordon also gives some more insight into memory configurations. It seems that the OS (either Android or Windows CE in single or dual-boot configurations) will be embedded with minimal on-board storage like those early Eee PCs. RAM will also be limited to about 512MB on base units going as low as 256MB and as high as 1GB in future (unannounced) devices. A 512MB model limits Firefox to about 3-4 opened tabs at a time. All of this is meant to keep prices down below $200 (or less when subsidized by carriers). Also of note is how the Tegra's GPU assists in rendering pixels anytime they appear on the display. In other words fonts, Firefox pages, scrolling, and of course video playback all benefit from an extra boost by the GPU. Check the video after the break to hear Gordon make some not so subtle jabs at Intel's relatively power-hungry Atom processor.

Update: It's worth mentioning that the first Tegra smartbooks are expected to launch in October according to Gordon.

To quote our Engadget Chinese editor, Andy Yang, "Tegra really rocks!" Our team in Taipei grabbed a video of the 8.9-inch Mobinova Elan in action and came away seriously impressed. NVIDIA is really pushing the HD playback and gaming capabilities of this Tegra-based netbook smartbook machine. In fact, we saw it running a 1080p trailer as smooth as silk. Now we know what you're thinking, Windows CE... ugh. Remember, CE (and Android for that matter) runs on the ARM-based Tegra whereas XP, Vista, and Windows 7 won't. Besides, NVIDIA was showing a custom UI with an OS X-like application launcher along the bottom. No word on price yet or availability but we'll update you when we've got more. Video after the break.

Sure, it's no Zaurus, but Sharp's new RD-PM10 certainly is a looker. It packs a 4.3-inch WQVGA screen, QWERTY keyboard and 8GB of storage into a pretty delightful form factor, and while it's only designed for light e-dictionary and media playback duties, with Windows CE 5.0 as the backbone, we could imagine it doing a whole lot more with a bit of extra oomph under the hood. There's a microSD slot for expansion, pretty great codec support, and a 360,000 KRW (about $288 US) list price.

[Via SlashGear]

Most modern hobbyist robots (those that aren't giant beetles) are just collections of servos plumbed together, shipping with controllers accessed cloaked in proprietary programming environments. They make it easy to get up to speed, but for full control in a standardized dev environment like Visual Studio you want something like the £175.00 ($255) Roboard RB-100. It's built around a Vortex86DX system on a chip, capable of running various flavors of Windows (including XP and CE) or x86 Linux distros -- probably even OSX or Android -- and offering connections for 24 servos, USB, audio, a MicroSD reader, and even a Mini PCI slot. A few builders at the Robosavvy forums have been working with early boards for a few weeks now and one, ATebay, has found they mount easily to various bots, including his creation above that looks something like an armor-less Wolf Clan Mad Cat ready to conquer the Inner Sphere. Detail pic of the board and obligatory robot dancing video after the break.

Our own Engadget Japanese had an opportunity to play with Toshiba's odd little WS206T for Japanese carrier Willcom -- one of the concept devices demoed at CES, for particularly observant readers and rabid Toshiba fans -- and came away largely unimpressed. Shoving a thin, internet-enabled tablet into an old-school leather notebook sounds cool and all, but the problem is that the hardware's weak -- the screen's smaller than it could be, Willcom's PHS network tops out at just a few hundred kbps, there's no voice calling, and it runs some weird widget-based custom UI on top of Windows CE. What's more, it's a single-touch resistive display, and the UI's said to be annoyingly inconsistent. On the upside, it'll only run ¥2980 (about $30) a month for unlimited data, including the cost of the hardware itself, when it launches later this month -- just don't expect a product that's going to change your life and win you friends.

Tired of pale gadget offerings? Live in South Korea? If "yes" on both counts you may want to keep your eyes open for what looks to be a special edition of the tiny CE-powered Mintpad MID. It not only offers the rich, ebony exterior that its pasty predecessor could only dream of, but also adds DMB functionality for capturing all the digitally broadcasted media floating through the Asian aether. The announcement page for the Mintpad DMB was hastily pulled after fans picked up on it, but this tease proves to be true look for the dark device to sell for ₩239,000, about $180, or a $30 premium over the vanilla version -- of which we're still waiting on that promised domestic release.

[Via Pocketables]

Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.




Given that venture capitalists generally are not as excited about young companies that sell atoms as opposed to bits, companies innovating in hardware are a rare species at DEMO, the long-running technology startup parade. At this year's spring conference, two companies introduced new devices. The plainly named Always Innovating introduced the Touch Book, a new entrant in the netbook category while the vowel diversity-challenged Avaak introduced the Vue personal video system designed for remote surveillance of a home. Both products cater to an increasingly mobile society that demands digital access on the go and share some similar characteristics, but the states of the market they address could make a major difference for them.

Always Innovating's Touch Book is a lightweight touchscreen computing device that will sell for $299. It's two signature features are a detachable keyboard – enabling the netbook to transform from a traditional clamshell to a "pure" tablet – and exceptional battery life of 10 to 15 hours on a single charge. The versatility of the hardware make the design one of the most appealing consumer tablet computing devices to date although the need to put the battery and processing guts behind the screen results in a thicker top half than one would find on most notebooks of similar size.

Still, one can use the device to casually surf the Web on the couch using the new mobile version of Firefox, show photos as a digital picture frame, or even attach it to a refrigerator using the magnetic backing that the company has put on the tablet. It's a fine collection of atoms, but there's one Atom you won't find inside the Touch Book.

This is just too good. We knew VMware was working on this sort of thing, but watching it in action is almost too much magic for our fragile hearts to comprehend. VMware MVP lets you run multiple mobile operating systems on a mobile device as virtual machines. It works exactly as you might hope something like this to work -- you can switch between operating systems on the fly, with full graphics acceleration and touchscreen interaction. You can even view both operating systems running simultaneously (in this case Windows CE 6 and Android), with info on just how much power each OS is swiping from your poor little mobile CPU. Performance isn't perfect, of course, but as mobile hardware gets better and the desire for multiple mobile operating systems on the same device becomes unbearable, we see good things happening here. VMware expects to release the software in 2009, video is after the break.

NVIDIA's really promising the moon here, and if they even halfway deliver we could have a real "game changer" (as they say in the business) on our hands. What's on offer is a theoretical $99 slide-out keyboard MID, running a Tegra 600 chipset and Windows CE -- NVIDIA, as usual, offers the innards and the concept, but will leave it to manufacturers to create (and price) the actual units. The device could handle HD video playback, "days" between battery charges and always-on wireless connectivity. This form factor lands in between NVIDIA's Tegra APX chipset for smartphones and ION GeForce chipset for netbooks, and if it actually delivers it seems like it could actually make MIDs viable in the market. Of course, there's the question of what sort of Windows CE skin it'll take to make this fun to use for the target market -- perhaps the fact that Tegra is coming to Android in the near future is enough to make this all moot, but we're willing to give the $99 MID a fighting chance.

The Meizu M8 has been caught on camera plenty of times before, but we can't recall seeing an English-language version until now. One tester at MP4 Nation has managed to get some hands-on time with the unabashed iPhone doppelganger, and calls the audio and video playback quality a disappointment, especially given the powerful Samsung ARM CPU inside. As he eloquently puts it, "cheap MP4 players can do a better job." Ouch. Video resizing also seems to be poorly implemented when switching to full screen, he shows, cutting off the edges when it doesn't match the 3:2 aspect ratio. It's not all bad, though, as the photo viewer and phone book has been aptly copied from Apple's flagship mobile, including multi-touch zoom, and the Windows CE-masking GUI is fluid. More videos of the M8 are promised, but in the meantime, check out volume one after the break.