SlashGear Week In Review - Week 45 2010
We had another beautiful week in the geek neighborhood last week and it's time to run down some of the most important stories over the last week in this edition of the SlashGear Week in Review. Windows Phone 7 went on sale in the US on Monday. Four GSM only devices landed with CDMA phones not coming to the US until early 2011. A cool looking Mintpass tablet with dual-screens was tipped to land in 2011. The coolest feature may not be the dual screens, but the dual-boot OS that the tablet will offer with Windows 7 and Android.
Backing up your computer got easier with a new Clickfree C3 wireless backup device landing. The device has a 500GB HDD inside and uses WiFi for backing up your data. A new tablet for kids is coming in the middle of 2011. The tablet will be called the Fable and have a 7-inch screen and kid specific features for helping them to learn and play.
A daredevil with a wing and rockets strapped to his back jumped from a hot air balloon last week. The guy then fired up his rocket pack and did some loops to prove how awesome he is. A crazy looking amplifier for the speaker on your iPhone surfaced that is called the Horn Stand. It reminds me of a record player form the 20's and uses no electronics to amplify the sound.
Google announced that it would be offering free in-flight WiFi to passengers on three major airlines for Christmas. The service is expected to be used by about 15 million travelers. Hell's Foundry has offered a new dock for your iPod that fits on a Harley gas tank. That may well make the Harley one of the largest iPod docks ever.
We went hands-on with the Samsung Continuum for Verizon early in the week. We figure the little 1.8-inch ticker display will take some getting used to, but it's an interesting device. The Alienware M17x R3 was tipped to be landing soon with a new AMD GPU in tow. The notebook is pegged to be getting the Radeon HD 6970/6870.
The Hasbro my3D device surfaced and is sort of like a 3D Viewmaster that uses the iPhone rather than round discs of photos. The device is expected to launch next spring for about $30. Samsung Display has shown off a really cool flexible 4.5-inch AMOLED screen. The screen uses a new plastic substrate that can withstand the 350-400 degree temperatures that are involved with integrating the AMOLED layers.
Lenovo's new IdeaPad U260 ultraportable notebook leaked last week. The machine has a 12.5-inch screen, will use Core i3 or i5 processors, and is very thin. A dude showed off his invention called the FlyRad. FlyRad is a battery-powered unicycle that the user can speed around being pulled by while they wear rollerblades.
We offered up a preview of the Huawei S7 tablet that will land next month in Europe for $299.99. That price will make it a lot cheaper than the Tab, but it has some compromises we aren't that happy with and we are hoping that when it finally ships some of those things will be fixed. The Blackberry PlayBook tablet is set to arrive in 2011 and RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie has hinted at the price. The PlayBook will reportedly be under $500, which we can expect to mean $499.
Windows Phone 7 launched during the week and by mid-week we had heard rumors that only 40,000 of the devices sold at launch. That would make for a much slower launch than the iPhone or Android devices. Sprint announced that it would be getting the ApplePeel for the iPod touch, the device is called the ZTE Peel and will sell for about $80 with the service going for $30 monthly with no contract.
A tiny, square computer surfaced Thursday called the Xi3 Modular computer that is really cute. The boxy little rig measures 4-inches per side and has all sorts of connectivity and an AMD Athlon processor with up to 4GB of RAM. HP has announced that "extraordinary demand" for the Slate 500 has prompted a six week weight to get the device in customer hands. The rub is that folks who pre-ordered don't know if that means their machines will be 6-weeks out or what, and rumors are circulating that a WiFi issue is the reason for the delay.
Apricorn has announced a new Mac Array that puts a RAID SSD array inside a Mac pro to improve system performance. The Mac Array is used for virtual memory and promises 10x the performance of a Mac Pro without it. The HTC Media Link HD H100 hit the FCC last week. That should mean the device is set to launch really soon and it will let you get your content from the smartphone to the TV.
Call of Duty: Black Ops rolled in the dough to the tune of $360 million in the first 24 hours of sales. That figure is in the US only making for a massively successful launch. We tossed our review of the T-Mobile HTC HD7 smartphone up later in the week. We think that there are other WinPo 7 handsets on the market that do a better job.
A geek has taken a My Little Pony figure and crammed a soldering iron so far up its purple bum that the thing poked out of the pony's forehead. The finished product is cute and made my 6-year-old daughter want a soldering iron for Christmas. Rumors circulated that the delay in the launch of iOS 4.2 was due to a WiFi connection bug on the iPad. Supposedly, after the update iPad users could connect to the web, but couldn't do anything with the connection.
A new iPad app surfaced late in the week called Korg iMS-20. The app puts a classic Korg synthesizer onto your iPad so you can live out your 80's rock dreams. We went hands -on with the Droid Pro and offered up our unboxing video Friday. Check out the video and details to hold you over until our full review lands.
Sony's Vaio signature collection notebooks debuted Friday. The EA series can be had with a very ornate looking golden embossed patter with pattern that looks like it would be welcome in a high-tech version of Arabian Nights. Thanks for reading and we will see you next week!