SlashGear Week In Review - Week 40 2009

It's hard to believe it is October already and the leaves are already falling off the trees. Another week come and gone and today I am back with another week in review for your perusal. We found out early this week that the Palm Pre is still headed to Verizon according to an insider. The alleged insider didn't give any word on when exactly this may happen.

If you have dreams of Project Natal gaming with some of your existing favorite Xbox 360 titles, it seems you will be out of luck. Project Natal is unlikely to be compatible with existing games for the console. TomTom whipped out a new GPS device early last week called the XS 340S Live with AT&T connectivity. The device offers a slew of local search features along with live traffic. The downside is after three months you have to pay for the AT&T connection.

Nikon is set to launch a new DSLR camera on October 15 with 1080p video. The camera is rumored to be called the Nikon D3s and I am sure it won't be cheap. The Apple App Store hit another milestone with week when it passed two billion downloads. It's crazy how mainstream the app store has gone, even my 7-year-old knows how to grab games from the App Store, which reminds me I need to change that iTunes password.

Panasonic showed off a 50-inch 3D plasma HDTV this week that I want very badly. When 3D TV and movies come to the living room, I will be a happy camper. A new HP dv3 TouchSmart notebook computer was leaked this week along with some deets on a new consumer laptop line. One of the notebooks crams a Core i7 inside to replace your desktop.

We reviewed the Sprint Instinct HD by Samsung this week. In the end, we found it has some strong features with particularly good video for a mobile phone, but we don't think the handset is good enough to keep ahead of the game. Speaking of Samsung, its new 12MP W880 camera phone leaked this week. The thing is basically a camera with phone bits crammed in rather than the other way around. We also reviewed the HP Z60 Workstation, a system that packs a whole lot of performance.

Verizon has a new HTC handset inbound and set to hit this month called the HTC Imagio. The device is pretty slick looking and is a Windows Mobile world phone. The Dell Latitude Z 600 went all official this week with wireless charging. The downside is that the price isn't at all recession friendly at nearly $2,000.

Rumors tipped up that the long rumored Apple Tablet computer would come in two flavors — one with 3G and one without. The device is also said to run the iPhone OS, which is not surprising. The iPhone OS is very good. AT&T and Garmin dropped the details of their G60 nuvifone this week set to hit on October 4 priced at $399 before the MIR.

The Android-powered ODROID handheld gaming system went up for pre-order with full release set for December. The little gaming device will cost you about $320 if you have to have it. TiVo launched a new app for Blackberry users to allow them to schedule recordings remotely. The app supports single episode recording and season pass.

DoubleSight unveiled a line of cheap 7" and 9" USB powered LCDs this week. The little screens sell for well under $200 and should be great for the netbook user wanting more screen space. A video of a very serious man wearing the Activelink Power Loader exoskeleton with force feedback tipped up mid-week. Why does this thing remind me of Sigourney Weaver?

We tossed a video of the QNAP NMP-1000 HD network media player up this week. In addition to allowing you to stream media, the little device also allows for network backups. Intel Classmate PC orders have been cancelled. These are the machines that were low cost and fought against the OLPC XO laptop for the minds of kids in developing countries.

Pioneer whipped out the first 12x Blu-ray writer this week. More speed is a big deal when you are talking about writing huge amounts of data to a Blu-ray disc. OnLive announced this week that it has secured more venture funding to continue to develop and deploy its cloud-based gaming service.

If you are excited about the Nokia Booklet 3G we found out this week that the device will be a Best Buy exclusive selling for about $500. Why you would pay that much for the thing is my big question, you will need a 3G plan for it anyway so you might as well just grab one of the subsidized netbooks and save yourself a few hundred bucks. I predict a big bag of fail for Nokia. iHome pulled the wraps off a new iP88 iPhone/iPod alarm clock this week that has dual docks for charging two devices at the same time. The thing may be great for homes with multiple devices.

The Blackberry Storm 2 9550 was previewed this week and said to have lots of rough edges. And here we were assuming that Blackberry would actually make the touchscreen device better than the first. Then again, perhaps "a few" rough edges is better than the original Storm. AT&T and TerreStar announced that AT&T would be distributing the Genus satellite phone that will operate on the AT&T 3G network as well as satellite networks for anywhere coverage.

Haleron debuted a slick dual CPU Intel Atom netbook called the Swordfish Net 102 Dual this week. The thing is appealing in a way, but the battery life has to be atrocious. Verizon sent the Hub home phone to the death chamber this week killing the thing off after only 8 months on the market. Did anyone really think that the Hub would work?

A new patent app from Apple turned up late in the week showing that Apple as plans for full-hand multitouch. No more two fingers, now Rosie Palm and all five of her sisters can get in on the act. Rumors that the Palm Pixi would hit Sprint on October 20 tipped up Friday. The Pixi is the next Palm webOS device. I continue to be surprised that Palm went with Sprint for another exclusive handset.

T-Mobile USA confirmed that Android 1.6 was being rolled out OTA to all Android handsets. The exact day that the OTA distribution will happen is unknown, but it should be anytime considering T-Mobile said in the "coming days." A cool camera concept called the PUNCH concept broke cover Friday. The digi cam takes a picture like you expect, and then you hit the back of it to get a punched paper picture.

Amazon tried to kiss and make up with Kindle owners after pulling the 1984 eBook from users devices and giving them a $30 refund. One man didn't like that and filed suit ultimately costing Amazon $150K when the case settled this week. Asus introduced its most appealing nettop yet called the EB1501. The new EeeBox machine sports both a DVD slot and NVIDIA Ion power.

Finally, we will wrap up this edition of the week in review with the dumbest guy of the week. A man in Cincinnati walked into an Apple store and threatened to shoot his iPhone right before brandishing his concealed 9mm handgun. He's lucky Steve Jobs didn't pop out of a MacBook and beat him with a copy of Windows 7. Until next week, have a good weekend!