SlashGear Week In Review - Week 9 2011

Welcome to this week's edition of the SlashGear Week in Review! It was a busy week in the tech world with some major new products landing this week. The new Hanvon HPad A112 surfaced packing Android Froyo, a 3MP camera and a lot more. The tablet has a 7-inch 800 x 600 screen and is 10.8mm thick.

Microsoft opened the Kinect SDK up to folks that like the hack the motion sensing camera to do more than Microsoft intended. The personal use SDK is set for launch in March and a commercial version is coming later. Samsung has added a cool new feature to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 with the ability to steam TV. The feature also lands on the Galaxy S II.

We learned early in the week for some leaks that new MacBooks were sitting on pallets in retail stores around the country. Apple had strict orders to not unpack the pallets until the unveil later in the week. A cool capacitive brush for the iPad has surfaced that is sort of like a stylus that allows the user to draw. The brush is from Nomad and each brush sells for $24.

I think most of us were expecting the Verizon iPhone to do much better than it has. The number of people that have downloaded a popular app called Instapaper has remained basically the same with the launch of the new iPhone. This suggests that most buyers for the Verizon iPhone are from AT&T. The Sony Vaio S series broke cover early in the week. The notebook packs a 13.3-inch screen and a battery good for 14 hours of runtime. The notebook uses up to the Intel i7-2620M, 8GB of RAM and up to 128GB SSD for storage.

The Apple iPad 2 is said to be releasing in June after a production delay according to an analyst. The delay is reportedly the result of last minute changes to the new iPad 2 expected to be unveiled next month. Spring Design is phasing out the Alex eReader that has been on sale for almost a year. The device will reportedly be retired over the next six months with no replacement expected at this time.

A dude has taken the menacing looking Megatron tank from Transformers 2 and created a DIY replica of the thing. This isn't some small toy tank either, the tank weighs five tons. Windows 7 SP1 is now available. The new update for the Windows 7 OS is available for download and is 1.9GB.

Dell will start shipping the XPS 17 and XPS 15 laptops with Sandy Bridge inside on March 16. The machines will start at $1049 for the 17 and $899 for the 15. A cool iPhone accessory surfaced this week for bicyclists. The device is called the iBike and uses a waterproof case and sensors to turn the iPhone into a bike computer.

HP has unveiled new EliteBook and ProBook business notebooks. The notebook boasts up to 32 hours of battery life and can be had with Core i7, i5, and i3 processors and screens of 14-inch and 15.6-inch. The Motorola Atrix 4G got its obligatory teardown this week by iFixit. The innards of the cool smartphone are apparently easy to upgrade and repair.

Husqvarna unveiled a neat robot lawn mower mid-week called the Automower 305. The mower is battery powered and designed for small lawns. Razer unveiled the new Chimaera in standard stereo and 5.1 versions this week. The headphones are wireless and will work with the Xbox 360 and PCs.

An Apple event has been confirmed for March 2 that will see the new iPad 2 get unveiled for the first time. The event is taking place at 10am in San Francisco. An interesting alarm clock has turned up that has some IQ questions on it. The iQ Alarm alarm goes off until you answer the question on the screen correctly and if it's a dumb morning for you things could get annoying.

A sweet little personal submarine turned up mid-week called the Ego. The thing has a boat on top that floats on the water and the cabin is underneath allowing the passengers a view of the undersea action. We posted up our review of the Motorola Xoom. Even lacking Flash and 4G we found a lot to like with the new tablet.

We went hands on with the Vodafone Galaxy Tab 10.1. The tablet was pretty nice and we liked it with final judgment reserved for a full review. Apple officially unveiled the new 2011 version of the MacBook Pro notebooks. The most notable new changes are AMD graphics and a new IO port called Thunderbolt.

Sprint has halted the over-the-air update to Froyo for the Samsung Epic 4G. The update was stopped after complaints that the update was breaking the phones. We spent a bit of hands-on time with the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt. It's cool, expensive, and final judgment will come with the review of the machine later.

Fujitsu announced late in the week that its Stylistic Q550 slate PC with Windows would be launching this sprint. The tablet will start at about $800. The MacBook Pro that launched during the week has already been torndown by iFixit. The machine has new RAM inside. The notebook is certainly well packed inside the metal chassis.

An interesting universal sleeve for gadgets turned up called the NXE ActiveSLEEVE. The thing is designed to fit on the arm while people workout and keep their smartphone and other gadgets safe. Skype To Go launched late in the week and allows the user to make calls at lower rates without having to have a web connection or a 3G area. The service works on landlines and any mobile phones.

The world's first robot marathon will be held in Osaka, Japan. The event will see the humanoid walking bots traveling 26 miles over four days on an indoor track. Verizon CEO Dan Mead has stated that LTE products are coming from Apple. Mead didn't offer any product names or a timeframe.

Google changed its search algorithm this week to combat content farms. The fear is that some legitimate sites might be caught in the change. Thanks for reading this week's edition! See you next time. 