SlashGear Week In Review - Week 48 2009

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and weren't too shopped out yesterday! If you still have shopping to do for Christmas, we have some seen some cool gear over the last week that might be worth a look. The Sony Ericsson Kurara has been reviewed and the verdict is that the device needs to be cheap to succeed. We reviewed the Nokia Booklet 3G this week. The final verdict was that the machine is underpowered and outperformed by first generation netbooks.

Early in the week Roku unveiled its new open content delivery platform along with its first ten channels of content. Roku expects that the platform will be picked up by more developers as time goes by.

A Microsoft roadmap was spied this week that showed Microsoft has Windows 8 set for a 2012 delivery. If it can hit that delivery date, it would be back on its every four-year major release schedule. A cool digital Etch-a-Sketch was spied this week with real analog knobs with resistance and shake to clear. The real knobs actually control the onscreen drawing.

The HP Pavilion DM1 was reviewed and found to be a decent notebook with respectable battery life. The catch was that the notebook has a cramped keyboard.

If you are a big fan of HTPC machines and have one in your living room, you have probably wished for an easier control method than a normal mouse and keyboard. A cool mini QWERTY keyboard with a track pad built in turned up this week that may be perfect for HTPC duty. The Nintendo DSi LL has received the obligatory teardown online. Other than the larger screens, the thing seems to be more of the same the DSi already offers.

Word came in this week that some Core i7 iMacs were showing up DOA and with cracked screens. The cracked screens are being blamed on shipping and seem to happen on the lower left corner. UPS guys hate gadgets I think. Android phones running OS version 1.6 have been gifted with the Google Maps navigation beta pack that 2.0 users received a while back. The free app turns Google Maps into a turn-by-turn GPS device. Google's new Chrome OS has been benchmarked and found wanting. The new OS came in dead last in a recent test of other open source OS'.

We reviewed the Nokia E72 this week and declared the device in one of the best messaging handsets this side of a Blackberry. However, its design is pedestrian and not very appealing next to devices like the iPhone. AT&T announced that it will offer DataConnect Passes this week. The passes will be offered for 3G service by the day, week, or month without a contract.

Klausner Technologies sued RIM and Motorola this week over alleged patent infringement on visual voicemail technology. The case was filed in East Texas court infamous for siding with patent holders. MSI unveiled the X-Slim X430 notebook computer this week with an AMD Athlon Neo processor inside. The X430 has the super slim design that the X-Slim line is famous for.

The Motorola Milestone is rumored to be hitting the UK on December 7. The device can already be preordered for the equivalent of $731. Amazon unveiled a firmware update for the Kindle DX this week that increased battery life by 85% with wireless turned on. The new update also adds a native PDF reader to its bag of tricks.

Industri Repro announced a new enclosure for the Xbox 360 that allows the user to put the game console into an AV rack. The case is called the XBEE, the chassis should keep things cool with three 120mm fans. That super cool Kohjinsha DZ dual-screen netbook is set to start shipping in December. I am still very curious what the battery life for the device is like.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U150 ultraportable showed up in the US this week at a price starting from $649. The machine has processor options and lots of other options in an 11.6-inch screen notebook. The MSI Wind 12 U230 running the AMD Congo platform debuted Friday. The rig has a 12.1-inch screen and 4GB of RAM. The most notable feature is the very thin profile of the notebook.

Late in the week the Viewsonic N01 MID was spied in the wild. The small tablet device uses Windows XP and a 1.1GHz Atom CPU. Another week in review is in the bag, thanks for reading and Happy Thanksgiving!