symbolset writes “Outbound Intel CEO Paul Otellini created quite a stir when mentioning that touchscreen laptops would reach a $200 price point. CNET is now reporting in an interview with Intel chief product officer Dadi Perlmutter that these touchscreen laptops will run Android on Intel Atom processors at first. ‘Whether Windows 8 PCs hit that price largely depends on Microsoft, he said. “We have a good technology that enables a very cost-effective price point,” Perlmutter said. The price of Windows 8 laptops “depends on how Microsoft prices Windows 8. It may be a slightly higher price point.” … Perlmutter didn’t specify what the Android notebooks will look like, but it’s probable they’ll be convertible-type devices. He also noted that he expects the PC market to pick up in the back half of the year and heading into 2014 as new devices become available.”

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Ars Technica reviewer Lee Hutchinson says that Dell’s Ubuntu-loaded 13″ Ultrabook (the product of “Project Sputnik”) is “functional,” “polished,” and (for a Linux laptop) remarkably unremarkable. “It just works,” he says. Hutchinson points out that this is a sadly low bar, but nonetheless gives Dell great credit for surpassing it. He finds the Ultrabook’s keyboard to be spongy, but has praise for most elements of the hardware itself, right down to (not everyone’s favorite) the glossy screen.

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adeelarshad82 writes “After being tweaked and polished for months with the help of feedback from pro gamers and enthusiasts alike, Razer’s Project Fiona has finally come of age. Re-named as Razer Edge Pro, this gaming tablet is way more than a mere plaything. Razer Edge Pro is a beast which packs a dual-core Intel Core i7-3517U Ivy Bridge processor with 8GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce GT 640M LE graphics card with 2GB of dedicated memory. All this in a small 7 by 11 by 0.8 inches wide frame which weighs only 2.14 pounds. Comparing the Razer Edge to anything else is tough, considering that it doesn’t necessarily have a true competitor. However in a series of performance comparisons with other powerful tablets and ultraportable gaming laptops, Razer Edge performed better than the tablets but wasn’t at par with ultraportable gaming laptops. For instance when comparing scores from 3DMark 11, the Edge Pro scored 2,503 points at entry settings and 504 points in extreme mode putting it ahead of both competing tablets, the Microsoft Surface Pro (1,055 Entry, 206 Extreme) and Samsung ATIV SmartPC (1,044 Entry, couldn’t run at Extreme mode), but behind the gaming-focused laptops, like the the Maingear Pulse 11 (3,868 Entry, 724 Extreme) and the Razer Blade (3,458 Entry, 716 Extreme). What’s baffling is that with all accessories incuded (gamepad dock and the console dock) the final price of the tablet is a cool $1,870, which most expensive than not only the two tablets tested but also the two gaming gaming laptops compared. It remains to be seen whether the Razer Edge Pro is something special or just on the edge of it.”

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writertype writes “Over the weekend, Lenovo launched the ThinkPad T431s, a ~$950 notebook with chiclet keys, no trackpad buttons, an integrated battery, and Windows 8 but no touchscreen. The T431s is also thinner and lighter than the bulletproof bento boxes we all know and love. The argument ReadWrite makes is that ThinkPads are becoming slowly, but significantly, worse. Do you agree?”

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An anonymous reader writes “OSNews’ managing editor Thom Holwerda has posted a lavish five-part retrospective on Palm, covering its history, user interface, internal technology, and competition. Holwerda first pays tribute to the pioneers of automatic handwriting recognition, including two remarkable stylus tablets (connected to mainframe computers) produced by RAND Corporation during the 1960s. The action picks up a couple decades later as Jeff Hawkins implements a handwriting recognition engine for his employer, the makers of the high end GRiD compass (MS-DOS) laptop. Hawkins dreamed of developing handwriting recognition for a device small enough to be carried around in one’s pocket and cheap enough to be sold to a mass market. Along the way he had an epiphany: instead of trying to recognize the user’s natural handwriting, why not create a simple alphabet that could be recognized reliably by the software? When Bill Gates entered the game, Hawkins had another big idea: why not compete against the Microsofts of the world by having fewer features, instead of more?” The handwriting recognition part is chock full of screenshots and video demos of early recognition systems, too.

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adeelarshad82 writes “A year after Razer tantalized us all with a concept device codenamed Project Fiona, the company has unveiled the Razer Edge, the world’s first tablet designed exclusively for high-end gaming. With the help of crowdsourcing endeavor of tapping into Razer’s fanbase for input on everything from chipset to physical dimensions, ‘Project Fiona’ has morphed from concept to full-blown reality. The Razer Edge is a 10.1-inch device which weighs a shade under 2 pounds and measures 0.8-inches thick. The device comes in two models: Base and Pro. The Base model sports an Intel Core i5 CPU, 4GB RAM, and a 64GB SSD, whereas the Pro comes configured with a beefier Intel Core i7 CPU, 8GB RAM, and the option for either a 128GB or 256GB SSD. Both models feature a USB 3.0 port, and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, and both run on a full version of Windows 8 with Intel architecture, in turn allowing PC games to run natively on the Edge without the need to be ported or optimized.”

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An anonymous reader writes “I’m sure most Slashdot readers have had occasion to suffer through a hardware manufacturer’s terrible website in search of product documentation. It’s often hidden away in submenus of submenus, and if your product is more than a couple years old, you probably have to wade through broken links. One guy has been helping to change that; he runs a site called Tim’s Laptop Service Manuals, where he collects by hand materials from many different companies and hosts them together in one spot. Now Toshiba has become aware of his project, and helpfully forced him to remove all of their manuals under a copyright claim.”

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MojoKid writes “The venerable Lenovo ThinkPad, with its little red TrackPoint nub, has gone the way of the Ultrabook. If there’s one small dig ThinkPads have taken with regularity over the years, it’s that though there’s a ton of quality and substance built into these machines, style was not a hallmark of the brand. The all new ThinkPad X1 Carbon could very well change the utilitarian stereotype of Lenovo’s business-backed line-up, however. As the name suggests, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is built from carbon fiber material throughout its chassis and internal rollcage. Its 14-inch display drives a native resolution of 1600×900, and its keyboard, arguably one of the nicest features of the ThinkPad line, is backlit and even more refined with contoured key caps. Battery life hits a max of about six hours on a full charge, and the machine weighs in at 3lbs and .31-inches at it thinnest dimension.”

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judgecorp writes “The USB 3.0 Promoter Group has published a Power Delivery standard which will deliver up to 100W. The specification (press release with link to full details) includes new bi-directional — and backward compatible — USB cables, and has been proposed as the new connector between mains adapters and laptops, eliminating e-waste by standardizing a proprietary component.”

At home, only having to run one cable to the wall might be nice, and being able to grab some juice from any friend may end the disaster that is forgetting your laptop power brick when on the road. And imagine only having to pack a single power hub instead of three or four redundant transformers (how many people don’t use their laptop to charge their phone nowadays?).

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An anonymous reader writes “TechCrunch reports that Dell will be officially re-entering the Linux laptop market. Beginning this fall, it will sell a ‘developer edition’ of one of its Ultrabooks that comes pre-loaded with Ubuntu 12.04. Dell first started offering computers with Linux installed in 2007, but they dropped the products in 2010. This spring, a skunkworks effort called Project Sputnik was announced, and now, after the completion of a short beta test, the Ubuntu laptops have been given a green light for commercial sale. Canonical has been working alongside Dell to help make this happen.”

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harrymcc writes “2012 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Grid Compass 1101, the first portable computer with a briefcase-like case with a keyboard on one side of the interior, a flat screen on the other, and a hinge in the middle–the ‘clamshell’ design that eventually became standard for all portable PCs. It’s proven to be a remarkably useful and durable design, and only with the advent of the iPad has it faced serious competition.”

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jfruh writes “Taipei’s Computex trade show has seen an array of strange devices on sale that are somewhere between PCs and tablets: laptops with screens you can twist in every direction, tablets with detachable keyboards, all-in-one PCs with detachable monitors. Some have Intel chips, some ARM chips; some run Windows 8, some Android. They all exist because of the cheap components now available, and because Windows 8 will make touch interfaces possible — but mostly they exist because PC makes are starting to freak out about being left behind by the tablet revolution.”

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jakooistra writes “My sister recently asked me for a laptop recommendation. I said, ‘Sure, what are techie brothers for,’ and diligently started my search for her perfect laptop. Two days later, I feel like I’ve aged two years. Every laptop vendor seems to want to sell a dozen different, poorly-differentiated models, with no real way of finding out what is customizable without following each model to its own customization page. And there are so many vendors! How am I, as a consumer, supposed to find what I need? Is there a website, hiding somewhere I just can’t find, that tracks all the multivariate versions and upgrade choices in an easily searchable database?”

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TV maker Vizio is famous for undercutting competitors’ prices on LCD TVs; now, the company has released word that it will introduce a new line of budget computers, and next week will be showing them off at CES. Bloomberg reports that the company won’t yet disclose actual prices (the kind with numbers), but says instead only that they will be at a “price that just doesn’t seem possible.” As the article mentions, the all-in-one desktop machines shown look a lot like Apple products; BetaNews has pictures, and ominously mentions Apple’s tendency to sue over similar-looking products.

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jfruhlinger writes “The Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble Nook tablets are similar enough and close enough together in price that they ought to be fighting market share and one-upping each other in terms of features they offer users. But the latest OS upgrades to both gadgets claims to be an ‘upgrade’ while actually taking functionality away: both remove the ability to root the device.”

A more balanced way of looking at it is that the updates fix known local privilege escalation vulnerabilities. This might be more of an issue for people wanting to hack on the Nook Tablet: its bootloader is confirmed locked, but reports lean toward the Kindle Fire having an unlocked bootloader letting anyone flash their own software without needing to gain root first.

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angry tapir writes “Dell has ceased production of Inspiron Mini netbooks; in effect ending its pursuit of the receding netbook market, at least for consumer sales. When Dell ran through its stock of the netbooks several months ago, it declined to manufacture more units.”

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The iPad has sold extremely well at a starting price of $500 but “that kind of pricing doesn’t work for many tablet vendors,” says a story at CNET. And recent price drops reflect this. It’s been a rough year for tablet makers, and it’s not even Black Friday yet.

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First time accepted submitter phonewebcam writes “Here’s something to liven up your weekend: a video of the Raspberry Pi running Quake 3. We’re still working on ironing a few kinks out (specifically, there seems to be a library issue which means our framerate, while good, isn’t quite as spectacular as we know it can be; we’re working on it as I post this) – but this is what test boards are for, and we’re making great progress getting the boards running smoothly.”

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MojoKid writes “For a CPU that hasn’t seen the light of day, there’s a great deal of debate surrounding Apple’s A6 and the suggestion that it may not appear until later in 2012. The A6 is a complex bit of hardware. Rumors indicate that the chip is a quad-core Cortex-A9 CPU built on 28nm at TSMC and utilizing 3D fabrication technology. While the Cortex-A9 is a proven design, Apple’s A6 will be one of the first 28nm chips on the market. The chip will serve as a test case for TSMC’s introduction of both 28nm gate-last technology and 3D chip stacking. This is actually TSMC’s first effort with an Apple device. The A4 and A5 have both historically been manufactured by Samsung.”

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According to the New York Post — among many others — Amazon is expected to launch its long-anticipated color tablet in late September or October, and the device is slated to sell for ‘hundreds less’ than the iPad, which implies a price of $300 or less. MSNBC says much the same, but adds some (their words) “generic looking mockups” to illustrate. I expect millions of Kindle owners will happily skip the added weight and shorter battery life of a full-fledged tablet, but it’s good to have options.

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