SlashGear Week In Review - Week 32 2009

The weekend is here again fellow geeks and geekettes so I am back with another week in review. Monday more rumors surfaced that has Apple launching that long anticipated tablet device this November. The rumors further claim that the tablet will be aimed at gaming and media use. Early this week Verizon cut the pricing on all its smartphones save a few of the new ones to $99. That makes us think lots of new smartphone hardware is on its way.

Sony had the specs for a pair of coming eReaders leak this week ahead of their official launch. The readers are available in two sizes and look to battle the Kindle for the dollars of avid readers around the country. Apple's coming new OS X Snow Leopard hit Amazon for pre-order this week. The prices should make Bill Gates blush, an individual upgrade is a mere $29 and a five-user upgrade pack is $49.

Nikon's VP650 point-and-shoot camera was tipped for launch in September on Monday. The slick camera is the first to integrate a projector into the feature list to allow easy sharing of photos with friends without having to crowd around the screen. Amazon added the Palm Pre to its online catalog Monday at the same $199.99 price everyone else is offering the device for.

OCZ's massive 1TB SSD appropriately called the Colossus had pricing and availability released, the bad news is the SSD will sell for $2,500! WildCharge unveiled its oh so desirable wire-free charging system for the iPhone this week and me want. The catch is that you have to remove the phone from the included case to sync.

Hardware geeks were thrilled this week when Intel's new Core i9 32nm six-core beast of a CPU was caught in the wild. The CPU is an engineering sample and said to run at 2.4GHz. An app for the Pre surfaced this week that does something sure to make Sprint mad. The app lets users tether the Pre for use as a 3G USB router. Who knows how long it will last before Sprint sues the maker into oblivion, so get the app fast.

Rumors cropped up on Tuesday that have Intel and Dell releasing a tablet that requires a subscription to battle the Kindle. The tablet will reportedly be given free to users who sign up for one or more subscriptions, presumably to digital magazines and newspapers. Logitech released a USB transceiver this week that will work with up to six different peripherals at the same time. The littleUnifying USB receiver sticks out of the port only 8mm and will let you move from work to home without having to plug in a new wireless receiver for your mouse and keyboard.

Android smartphone users got their own Amazon app this week that lets them take pics of things like CDs, DVDs and barcodes and find out how much they can buy the same product for from Amazon. Those rumors about a slim PS3 just won't die. They resurfaced again this week after the 80GB PS3 was killed off in Japan as evidenced by a leaked letter that final 80GB PS3 orders had to be place before Sunday August 9. The model is expected to be replaced by the 80GB PS3 slim.

Images of that sexy Zune HD that we have been hearing about have surfaced that show a sexy device that looks a lot like the original iPhone with a few more angles to me. Apparently, the device will come in black and silver colors. BFG unveiled some hot NVIDIA GTX 295 and 285 video cards this week that have self-contained liquid cooling units built in. Knowing BFG that will mean that the cards are overclocked significantly compared to stock cards. Expect the cards to be expensive though.

more fuel was thrown on the Apple tablet rumor fire this week when a listing for a device called iProd was unearthed in the code for the iPhone OS 3.1 beta. Speculation has the iProd as the tablet that was rumored again this week. Earlier in the week some leaked photos of the Zune HD surfaced and then on Wednesday CNET got hands on with the sexy device. This is the first Zune that looked like something a technophile would actually want to own.

If you are the sort who has a lot of Apple products like iPods and iPhone lying around, the dock for you showed up Wednesday called the Parat Parasync. The device is capable of synching 20 different dockable Apple products at one time. The much anticipated T-Mobile myTouch 3G went on sale Wednesday for $199.99 to replace the G1 as the top-of-the-line Android smartphone on the T-Mobile network.

Sprint announced new 3G and 4G wireless routers this week that allow up to four or more users to access a WiMax connection or a 3G connection at one time. The devices create mobile Wi-Fi hotspots. Toshiba says that it will be ready to launch its first fuel cell in the next two months. I have been waiting for fuel cells to be available for a while that are refillable and can power my notebook.

A screen shot from Rogers Wireless was leaked this week that shows the 8GB iPhone 3G will be replaced by an 8GB iPhone 3GS. The rub is that the screen shot shows that stores are expected to use all the 3G iPhones before selling the 8GB 3GS. WildCharge unveiled a very strange wired, wireless charging system called the PowerDisc. You have to plug the PowerDisc into your device with a cable and then the PowerDisc charges from the WildCharge pad.

Sony has unveiled a new and odd three-legged tripod device called the Party-shot that uses face detection and 360-degree panning capability to snap pictures of people at your parties without having to carry the camera with you. The upside is that you have an extra hand free to carry more beer if you use this thing. Sony detailed its Memory Stick XC with a whopping 2TB of storage this week. What happened to the Sony getting away from proprietary formats thing?

Samsung unveiled an eco-friendly phone made from bio-plastic on Thursday appropriately called the Reclaim. The device isn't a smartphone, but it sports a full QWERTY keyboard and is only $49.99 after rebates. Hitachi reveled its highest capacity and fastest hard drive ever with 2TB of storage and 7200 rpm speed called the Deskstar 7K2000. Strangely, the company has 500GB platters, but the drive uses five platters instead of four.

Microsoft unveiled a prototype keyboard Friday that uses pressure sensitive technology that is sure to force us all to learn to type again. The idea is that different amounts of pressure on keys would activate caps, lower case letters, or alternate characters. I can only imagine the illegible text that would result from my use of such a keyboard. The Chimera Killer Special Edition gaming desktop broke cover this week with some very nice specs at reasonable prices. If you have the money to buy a gaming machine right now, this is a machine worth considering.

One of the things I always take with me if I am working from a netbook is a mouse. I hate track pads and especially hate them on netbooks where they are so close to the keyboard. Newton unveiled its thin Mogo Mouse for Netbooks that comes with its own dock for sticking to the outside of a netbook allowing you to always have a mouse with you. The svelte Acer Aspire Timeline 1810T was sighted in the wild this week. The Timeline notebook is one of the latest CULV ultraportables around and should post some nice battery life figures.

We also had another Apple tablet rumor pop up Friday. An analyst claims that Apple could sell $1.2 billion worth of its tablet machines in only a year. That's assuming the new batch of rumors that the machine is coming turn out to be true.

There you have it, another week down and another week in review completed for your enjoyment. See you next week!