Previews and Reviews

Those tech companies seem to be taking the approach of America’s Independence Day pretty seriously with announcements of bringing new products to the old US of A. Not only did Samsung reveal that it will land its Ion based N510 and Go netbook on U.S. soil in the coming months, but it will be joined by the Archos 9.

Announced a month ago out of France, the Archos 9 tablet PC features a 9-inch touchscreen with virtual keyboard provided by Microsoft Windows 7.  However, for those that prefer to navigate with a mouse, the right edge of the device has an optical trackball and buttons.  Taking the shape of a Mobile Internet device (and less of a netbook), the Archos 9 is equipped with a new Intel Atom processor (Z515), 1GB of RAM and a 120GB hard drive. And because it would make no sense without it - it has 802.11bgn wireless.

The Archos 9 PC Tablet is scheduled to be in stores this Fall. No word on pricing, but if we had to guess we would say this guy should be in the $500 to $700 price range.

No one will argue with the fact that Amazon has been on to something with its Kindle family, so it doesn’t surprise us to hear that Borders Books is playing copycat.

UK Company Elonex has partnered with Borders in the UK to launch a 6-inch eBook Reader. But the new device sure doesn’t get points for originality: it is called the eBook and to get books on the device you have to go to the Borders eBook Download Store on your PC and then sync it with the device.

On the spec front, it uses eInk technology and has 512MB of on board memory (enough for approximately 1,000 eBooks). The 4GB SD card available in the accessory pack can hold 8,000 titles. Brits can pick up the eBook for £189 ($311) which includes an additional 100 free ebooks.

Though the eBook is available only from Borders UK stores now, Elonex told us that the possibility of bringing it to the U.S. hasn’t been ruled out and that initial sales show that it is doing better than expected. Borders in the U.S. currently carries Sony’s eReader but the Sony isn’t exclusively available at the book retailer.

Verizon Wireless’ new BlackBerry device, the Tour, will be available on July 12th for $199 with a 2-year contract and after a $70 mail-in-rebate.

You can think of the Tour as a Curve on steroids: It has a better 3.2MP camera, a newer operating system, a high resolution display, and a larger more spacious keyboard.

Also, if you’re a world traveler, you can take advantage of the phone’s world-phone support for access to GSM networks in 220 countries using its built-in SIM slot.

We’ve had a few chances to play with the new Tour and have loved what we’ve seen so far. While we’d love to see Verizon Wireless announce a next-generation device, we can’t complain when we see a BlackBerry that has a beefy spec list.

The Tour will also be available on Sprint. Stay tuned for full reviews of both.

If you haven’t heard of Tegra yet, you will. This system on a chip, which packs in powerful graphics and video capabilities, is the guts inside the upcoming Zune HD from Microsoft and a host of mobile Internet devices, like the Mobinova elan we played with at Computex. And now MobileCrunch and others are reporting that we will see a phone from a top-five manufacturer by the fourth quarter of this year powered by Tegra for $199.

So why all the hype around Tegra? The technology promises a first-class Flash experience, console-quality gaming, and up to 1080p video playback (depending on the device). Plus, Nvidia boasts that Tegra offers five times the battery life of current netbooks.

We sat down with Michael Rayfield, general manager of mobile business at Nvidia, to find out more about Tegra’s potential and how it compares with competing technologies vying for a bigger slice of the smartbook/smart phone market.
Here are the quick highlights:

• Nvidia claims that Tegra is superior to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon and Freescale’s technology because it’s working with Adobe to accelerate Flash using the GPU.
• Tegra will initially support only Windows CE smartbooks, but the company is already working on bringing Tegra to Android phones and will embrace the platform for larger screen devices once it’s mature enough.
• Nvidia believes that Tegra is superior to the latest iPhone 3GS when it comes to gaming. “Tegra has more graphics and 3D capability than any device that’s shipping in a mobile handset today.” Whether or not this capability will be leveraged on the Zune HD or later devices remains to be seen.

Read on for the full interview and all the juicy Tegra details.

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Dell seems to have picked up on a trend: shoppers really like the idea of low-cost, small-screened notebooks. Dell’s dabbled in this category already with its Studio 14z.

Now, the company has expanded its small business-oriented Vostro line to include the 1220, a 12.1-inch ultraportable starting at $799, a price that, before this year, would have been unheard of for a notebook this size, particularly in the business category.

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Today, Yoggie Security Systems announced the launch of the Yoggie Data Keeper line of secure flash drives, which pack high-end features designed to keep your portable storage free from all manner of nasty malware and prying eyeballs. Packing 2GB or 4GB storage capacities (as well as 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption), Yoggie Data Keeper  is available in three models, each containing an unique feature set.

• Yoggie Data Keeper (online firmware update capability)
• Yoggie Data Keeper Pro (built-in security features such as file-scanning anti-virus software and password protection for up to two users)
• Yoggie Data Keeper Personal Ed. (online firmware update capability; secure and non-secure partitions)

The flash sticks will be availble for purchase in August, but if you want to lay claim to one now, pre-orders are now being taken at www.yoggie.com.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Dell is considering joining the Mobile Internet Device brigade. The article claims that the pocket-sized device is ARM-based and powered by the Android operating system.

But don’t call the device a smartphone. It is being positioned as a Apple iPod touch competitor or, as the headline says, a “pocket Web Gadget.” In our opinion, MIDs have been tweener devices that don’t yet have voice capabilities (yes, we did say they make no sense).

Other than ARM and Android, there are not too many details, except that the project could be “delayed or scrapped entirely.” All in all, we have more questions than we know what do do with. What will be the internal platform? Nvidia’s Tegra? Qualcom’s Snapdragon? Is this the rumored Dell smartphone we have been hearing about for months? And above all…do people even want a Android MID? Tell us in the poll and in the comments.

The Nvidia Ion train seems to have left the station and second on the notebook stop (Lenovo’s S12 was the first) is Samsung. Though details are slim, Nvidia confirmed this morning that the company is working with Samsung to bring an 11.6-inch notebook to market with its Ion platform.

Though Nvidia would not confirm the specs, Netbook Italia is reporting that the laptop is called the N510 and packs a 1.66 GHz N280 processor along with Nvidia’s GeForce 9400M graphics. It will also feature 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3-in-1 card reader, and a 6-cell battery.

We will be digging up more details on the N510 including U.S. availability. Stay tuned.

As a major print and online publication, we get a lot of PR pitches every day, which range from the highly relevant (mobile tech) to the mostly relevant (technology in general, new Web sites) to the completely off-topic. For some reason, I’m the one on staff who keeps getting the most strange stuff. A few weeks ago it was “interview opportunity: man drinks snake venom to experience the hereafter” and, on a regular basis, it’s country music pitches like “Oak Ridge Boys Announce New Tour Dates” or “Ronnie Milsap Reveals Personal Journey.”

Today, I got a pitch that was relevant, but strange. PayPal, everyone’s favorite way of making payments online, has launched a new site called Do Stuff for Money.  The site lets users send their friends e-mail or Facebook requests to “do stuff” in exchange for cash. If your friend accepts a request, you get e-mailed back a link to pay her directly via PayPal.

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Today, Gateway announced a new line of notebooks, the inexpensive NV series. These two 15.6-inch  notebooks, which cost $499 and $599, both have a generous 4GB of DDR2 RAM to offset their fairly low-end processors (the more expensive one has Intel Core 2 Duo, as opposed to AMD dual-core).

Aside from their price, they target students with multimedia features such as an HDMI port, a 16:9 aspect ratio, and Dolby Sound Room speakers.

More uniquely, there’s a MyBackup button, which allows forgetful or harried students to back up with the press of a finger. As with other backup solutions, users can customize to which location they send data, as well as which files get duplicated, and when or how regularly this backup happens.

The notebooks will be available in NightSky Black, Coffee Brown, Midnight Blue and Cherry Red.

After the jump, check out the breakdown of the two configurations.

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